SCIENCE AND RELIGION: FINAL EXAM
spring 2008
Be sure to answer each question fully. Place your test and answers on your website and send me an email copy of your final exam to me at neuralsurfer@yahoo.com no later than midnite May 18th
REAL NAME: Francisco Rodriguez
USER NAME: flatlineronduty
Website address: http://hydroborator.blogspot.com
Attendance: 2 Missed, 0 Tardy
MIDTERM GRADE: None yet, but you can give me an "A".
POSTS: list all of your posts.
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2790
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2791
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2793
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2816
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2866
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2873
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2907
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2966
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2967
---------------------------------------------------1. Did you read all of the required books for this class? Bespecific about how many pages for each book, etc.
All 145 pages of Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution and Christian Faith; all 291 pages of Sam Harris’s The End of Faith; 179 pages of John Horgan’s Rational Mysticism. I read all the Lulu required books on the website, but only skimmed through them.
2. What was your favorite book and why?My favorite book was Nietzsche’s The Antichrist because it provided a critique of Christianity that is very unusual. Commonly, you hear Christians say that society’s values are going down the drain because we have lost the religious zeal past generations had. Nietzsche also thinks decadence pervades society, but instead he would put the blame on Christianity for bringing to an end the life-affirming culture of the ancient Greeks and replacing it with values for the weak. I had never seen it that way before.
CHOOSE 16 QUESTIONS FROM THE FOLLOWING (3 TO 30):
3. What does Nietzsche mean by the transvaluation of values and whatdoes this idea have to do with our concept of morality? According to Nietzsche, morality, and Christian morality in particular, is a system that appeals to the herd instinct of the masses in order to subjugate them to an elite, i.e. the priests. In effect, this slave-morality is a denial of the self, exalting that which benefits others at the expense of achieving one’s own goals. It has taught people that fulfilling one’s own desires and seeking power is evil, but Nietzsche remarks that in history, it has been those who had the determination to take what they wanted and explore their potential to the maximum who succeeded, and they did so without society’s approval. Humility, inaction, turning the other cheek, and altruism should then be eschewed in favor of ambition, drive, and fearlessness in order to rise above the common man and attain one’s goals.
3a. Why is Nietzsche so critical of Christianity? Nietzsche contrasts Christianity with Buddhism to show why he has so much contempt for the Abrahamic religion. Although he thinks Buddhism is also a decadent philosophy because it instructs its adherents to forgo desire, it is much milder than Christianity in its assault against human nature. Whereas Buddhism strives for the end of suffering, Christianity wants to put an end to man’s natural impulses which it calls sin. To do so, it implants unwarranted guilt and fear in the believer’s mind, and invokes the promise of life in a supernatural realm to cure the same negative feelings it implanted in the follower in order to accommodate to the rest of society. Nietzsche called Christianity "Plato for the masses" because it gave the common man Heaven in order for him to live safe and in accordance to expectations of the crowd, but since man now had this new celestial realm, the value of this world, the very one he can be certain about, paled in comparison.
http://prism-perfect.net/archive/nietzsche-buddhism/
http://sdcc13.ucsd.edu/~jcsung/ethics/posts/08.html
4. Give one specific example of what some may regard as morallyright or good and then argue how Nietzsche may argue the opposite.Be sure to pick anexample that would correlate with Nietzsche's transvaluation ofvalues.
Asceticism, the practice of renouncing one’s worldly desires, especially sexual one’s, is seen in Christianity as a virtue because it shows that the person is not controlled by instinct, but has great determination and dominion over his/her body. Conversely, Nietzsche shows great disgust at this practice. For Nietzsche, this is a depravation that consists of suppressing one of our most fundamental needs from which life itself originated, our sexual urges. It is an extreme case of self-denial out of servitude to someone else, namely a capricious deity whose edicts preach that everything mundane should be pitied, and does so by suppressing creativity, downgrading self-aggrandizement, and, in essence, making man subordinate to a moral code external to his desires.
5. Why isn't Bertrand Russell a Chrisitian? Substantiate yourargument.
Bertrand Russell does not believe in God because he considers the arguments for his existence either faulty or obsolete. He states, for instance, that if one thinks of God as the Uncaused caused that originated the chain of events, one is not really solving the problem because the question "what created God?" can still be asked. If one says that God was not created but has existed forever, one might as well say the same about the universe without the need for an additional entity for which there is no evidence. Likewise, he dismisses the Argument from Design for three reasons:
He cannot believe that people honestly think this is the best universe there can be. Evil, disease, natural disasters, etc. make this world too imperfect that he finds it implausible that an intelligent mind was behind its creation.
At the atomic level, natural laws become simply statistical averages rather than the exact relations that purportedly point to Lawgiver. Russell also comes up with Eutyphro’s dilemma of sorts, by arguing that if natural laws are the way they are because of a deity’s will, they are either a result of his whim or his attempt at making the best world possible. If the former, the reason behind their existence is something not bound to a law, and the whole logical chain is broken. If the latter, God had a reason to make natural laws the way they are, and so he himself is bound by some external principle. Therefore, Russell contends, a Lawgiver does not solve the question and merely creates more problems than there were to start with.
The apparent design found on the planet is cast into oblivion with Darwin’s evolutionary theory.
Furthermore, while Russell agrees with some of Jesus’ views, he does not consider Jesus the wisest of men because he believed in hell. According to Russell, there is nothing benevolent about hell because no matter what a person has done in their lifetime, it will never be commensurate to eternal punishment.
http://www.users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html
6. How would C.S. Lewis answer those who argue that there is noevidence for a God, particularly a Christian one? First, Lewis would say that religious longing is nearly universal. He questions why such a desire would have prevailed over generations if there were no way to fulfill it: "Creatures are not born with desires unlesssatisfaction for those desires exists." So, he concludes that the object of such desire must be real. In fact, the spiritual need is itself God’s mark on the human being.
Furthermore, Lewis agrees with the moral argument for God’s existence. C.S. Lewis says that those holding a subjectivist, nihilist, or relativist view of morality all contradict themselves given that at some point they assume that at least one thing is good, be it their own life, survival, society’s commands, etc. He then would say that for such a standard to exist there must be a Lawgiver, and this is God.
7. How does evolution help us to better understand WHY science arosein the first place? And why religion arose in the first place?
From an evolutionary psychological perspective, religion arose because beliefs in the afterlife and the supernatural in general helped people cope with the struggle for survival by making them feel like their lives possessed meaning beyond this world. At the same time, religion provided explanations about why the world is the way it is, and for an instinct-driven primitive human psyche, unverifiable explanations are better than no explanation at all.
Science arose because those who developed a method to objectively understand nature undoubtedly had an evolutionary advantage over those who did not. Technology could be systematically developed rather than being based only on trial and error. Moreover, with science, a human was able to confirm whether the knowledge he/she was passed on from previous generations was indeed veridical. Therefore, it is no wonder that over time science also became critical of religion.
9. What is science according to Feynman? How does his definitiondiffer from more normative explanations?
Science is to Feynman the product of the realization that discoveries about how the world functions have to re-verified empirically, instead of relying on the human notions that purported to explain the phenomenon in the past.
Science also instills the tendency to doubt, and from this stems a magnified appreciation for rationality and free thought. An important distinction is that observation and systematic analysis, while required for the practice of science, are not themselves scientific. They are merely the means by which the scientific enterprise is developed, and not its actual content.
Dictionary.com presents a more normative definition:
"a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences. "
As does Wikipedia: "Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is the effort to understand, or to understand better, how the physical world works, with observable evidence as the basis of that understanding. It is done through observation of phenomena, and/or through experimentation that tries to simulate events under controlled conditions."
Although both Feynman’s and more normative definitions seem quite similar, according to Feynman the scientific method by which we arrive at new knowledge is not included as science.
http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html
10. How would Feynman critique the current "intelligent design"movement? Be specific and see if you can relate Feynman's notion ofscience in your critique.
Intelligent design posits the existence of a conscious entity - a deity in disguise – as the creator or fine-tuner of life forms existing on Earth. Richard Feynman reminds us that for a theory to be scientific it has to be grounded in direct experience. Unless the existence of such an entity could be demonstrated by experiment – and that in itself seems to be impossible – intelligent design is imitating the valid scientific method, that is to say, it is pseudoscientific. Moreover, Feynman reminds us that a scientific theory, even if it is internally consistent, has to be able to make new predictions instead of just explaining a phenomenon that could be explained without that same theory. The overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of evolution by natural selection (the fossil and geological records, molecular and genetic evidence of common descent, and neo-Darwinian computational algorithms that have accurately predicted the course of microbial evolution in the lab, etc…) cannot be rivaled by intelligent design, which not only has no evidence in its favor, but also does not make any new predictions and even dismisses information that does not support its case. True science will always report the outcome of the experiment impartially, that is, both supporting and undermining evidence should always be considered.
12. How can religion, according to your teacher (and the lecturethat dealt with this), survive the onslaught of reason? What doesreligion have to do to "win" the science-religion battle?
Religion has to embrace skepticism and rational inquiry and dismiss dogma if it is to survive the onslaught of reason. If religion has something true to say about the world, it has to rise to the challenge openly and let science and philosophy dismantle a rotten carcass to expose the genuine precious stone. By accepting scientific discoveries, religion will filter itself and only those teachings which are truly in accord with the world will survive, which, if they do exist, will most likely be the important aspects of a veridical account of the world, anyway. More importantly, by assuming this position, the only trustworthy spiritual practices that will be those that are in touch with the body of knowledge regarding our human nature qua multi-brain-state-exhibiting organisms, which will also be the only religious practices to produce honestly fulfilling changes in our minds. If religion speaks the truth, it has nothing to fear. Otherwise, its fallacies will come to light sooner than later.
14. Why is evolution such a contentious issue among certainfundamentalist religious groups. More precisely, what is the coreissue that upsets certain religious devotees?
Evolution via natural selection is able to explain the complexity and vast number of different life forms that exist on the planet without any need for a Creator. Furthermore, it does so in a purely materialistic framework. Nevertheless, one could argue that the core issue religious fundamentalists abhor about evolution is the concept of common descent. It is antithetical to a view that considers humans to have a special, separate place from the rest of creation.
15. In your opinion, where can science help religion?
Science can show which religious beliefs are dubious or completely false. Instead of damaging religion, I consider this to be a great tool because once all the nonsense has been weeded out, if any religious beliefs survive scientific scrutiny, one could have greater confidence in them being true. For example, many notions of God, such as that of a humanoid being existing in an astral plane, are simply contradictory with what is known about physics and biology (e.g., there has to be a gravitational field to have mass, bodies require space to exist, human consciousness needs a brain, etc.). However, this same knowledge enables the believer to come up with a new concept of God that would be in accord with science, either in a deistic or pantheistic fashion. In my opinion though, the only way such an approach could be successful would be if Gould’s instruction of religion and science as non-overlapping magisteria is followed thoroughly.
16. In your opinion, where can religion help science?
Religion was man’s first attempt at understanding the world; it was a primitive form of science. Religion was also the vehicle through which morality and culture developed. It would be beneficial to science to study religious morality, not just because it would provide more insight as to what function certain principles served in primitive societies, but once the environmental cues that determined the course religion took are comprehended, a greater understanding of the human psyche will obtain. This way, religion could be used as a template to study culture itself, and we could apply what we learn about our collective mind to address questions more pertinent to our modern times.
20. How would Stephen Wolfram critique William Paley's argument(derived from his famous watch analogy) about intelligent design ora creator of complexity? How would a believer in such a God or a Creator critique Wolfram's argument?
Stephen Wolfram would say that a system's complexity is inherent in the set of basic units comprising a set, given that they can combine in a myriad of ways, giving rise to complexity. In this sense, since protons, electrons, and neutrons can assemble themselves in different configurations to form elements, compounds, molecules, etc. it is to be expected that given sufficient time a vast array of biological life forms would come into existence. Thus, the watch would need no watchmaker.
The believer might contend that the very fact that the complexity is brought about by statistical averages alone suggests that there is no such thing as complete randomness. That is to say, the existence of a marked probability density can be regarded as a "law of chance", something truly contingent. One could suppose that an inherent complexity substantiates the idea that reality was indeed the result of mindful planning.
22. Are spiritual experiences reducible to neuroscience? If yes, doessuch an intertheoretic reduction eliminate the God Hypothesis? If no,what is science missing in its study of mystical states?
The most I can say is that a neuroscientific explanation can be given for any spiritual experience, so I lean to the affirmative response. This is far from removing the God Hypothesis. There will still be people who will posit the origins of moral intuition, purpose, and aesthetics, to name a few, in a Conscious Aseity. What science is missing in its study of mystical states is an attempt not just to reduce the experience to signaling cascades in the brain, but to integrate and reconstruct the pathways and compare them against the individual’s internalized experience. In other words, the second perspective should be the person’s view from the inside out as shaped by his environment and psychology.
25. In Believer-Skeptic, your teacher has a long critique of Ken Wilber. Why are Wilber's views on evolution so contentious?
Wilber misrepresents evolution by making it sound like intermediate structures are of no use whatsoever. He asks the question: "of what use is half a leg?". Meanwhile, evolutionary biologists understand that evolution is a gradual process; any improvement over a previous structure is bound to provide a cutting edge in survival and so to be passed on. To paraphrase Dawkins, half a leg is better than 49% of a leg, and that 1% could make all the difference. More importantly, Wilber forgets that a structure’s function often times is not determined from the onset, but is gradually acquired as the structure proves to be useful for a task it was not intended to perform.
26. Is Francis Crick correct that we will never find the soul because it doesn't exist?
When Crick makes a statement of that kind he stops talking as a scientist and starts injecting his own opinion on a question outside the purview of science. Nonetheless, one could certainly say that there is no indication whatsoever that a soul operates on the body. It is truly puzzling to even start to imagine how such an interaction could take place, for if the soul affected the body to produce physical results, the interaction itself would be subject to physical law, and so the soul could not be supernatural. In the end, the question of the existence of the soul remains a metaphysical question and as such may be arrived at depending on one’s assumptions about the nature of logic and the world. Therefore, it remains an open question in spite of modern neuroscientific discoveries.
29. In the future, how can we have a more fruitful and a more civil conversation on the subject of science and religion? What should be the guidelines, if any?
It will take time and for it to happen society will need to have done away with the stigma associated with alternative religions, and atheism and agnosticism. Once we have learned to value people for their behavior and values instead of judging them for their religious views, the door will be open for more amenable discussion. I think the place to start with would be the promotion of tolerance and uncensored, critical thinking. People should be exposed to the strongest arguments against their own views so that they can see their own faults, think these matters through, and either develop better arguments for their position or change their minds. For this to be possible though, the educational system would need to start paying less attention to religious fundamentalists and edgy secularists, and focus on the moderates. It is often said that moderates have lost consistency, but I do not think that is necessarily so. There are educated, scientifically-minded religious devotees, some even conservatives, (I would like I once was one of them),.as well as tolerant, respectful and insightful non-religious people in this world. It is them who are more likely to engage in civil discussion with the intent of broadening their knowledge and come with an open mind rather than convincing the world that the other side is evil, stupid, ignorant, arrogant, you name it. My two cents for what they are worth :P
______________________________
31. What was the most intersting thing you learned this semester?What was your favorite film?
My favorite interesting thing was Lane’s story about his trips to India and the guys that showed him a stone with his name engraved in Sanskrit. My favorite film was that one that Lane made with the funky music that showed the elements of the Periodic Table.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Midterm
Due date: April 11th (no later than midnite of that day).
Instructions:Be sure to answer each question fully. I encourage you to usehyperlinks (that is, listing URL addresses of websites thatsubstantiate your position), multimedia (pictures, graphs), and keyquotes to enliven your essays. Place a copy of your test on yourwebsite and be sure to send a copy to your teacher when finished viaemail at neuralsurfer@yahoo.com Be sure to do your own work and citethe work of others when it is incorporated within your narrative.
1.NAME: Francisco Rodriguez
2. USERNAME: flatlineronduty
3. Web site (or blogger) address: http://hydroborator.blogspot.com/
4. Attendance: how many classes have you missed? How many have youbeen late to? Missed one; late to none.
5. LIST all of your posts (you can copy and paste them here, if youwish, or provide a link to all of them)
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2790
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2791
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2793
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2816
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2866
http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/sciencereligion/message/2873
6. Have you watched all of the required films/lectures, etc., so far? Sure.
7. Did you do the required reading? Did you partially read them? Ifso, how much? I read most of the required books. I am in the process of reading Rational Mysticism and am yet to read Orthodoxy.
8. How would an atheist (in your chosen book) critique a theist's argument (in your chosen book) the existence of God? Be specific and be sure to reference your chosen reading.
Since Joan Roughgarden’s book Evolution and Christian Faith is not concerned "with ‘proving’ whether God exists, but with living a Christian life", I will base my answer on that.
Joan Roughgarden considers Christianity a good moral compass against the secular trend of unhindered individualism based on competition. She claims that "Jesus consistently tried to get people to think for themselves, to not rely on fixed rules or literal text". Conversely, Sam Harris in The End of Faith argues that at the root of religion is unreason, as a consequence of its foundational structure, faith. Faith exempts beliefs from having a basis in experience corroborated by evidence. Due to this, people end up believing things that a person outside their religion would consider insane. If these beliefs are of the extreme variety, people will in turn commit atrocities to assure their religion’s perseverance. He gives as example’s of this the Inquisition and the 9/11 terrorist attack.
9. How would a theist argue against the atheistic notion that a belief in God is delusional? Again, be sure to reference your chosen reading.
Joan Roughgarden would say that thinking that evolutionary biology shows a belief in God is delusional stems from adopting a "selfish-gene" view of evolution. That is to say, one that in emphasizing the gene as the unit of evolution, creates a philosophy based on selfishness and competition that does a sloppy job at explaining how "the contribution of individual genes to the whole […] can function in ways beyond the sum of its parts". Moreover, in many instances it is seen that organisms depend more on social interactions (be those intra or inter-species) than on competition for their survival.
Finally, one is better able to see the beauty of God in nature when one realizes that, while genetic mutations are random, natural selection, the main driving force behind evolution, is anything but. Natural breeding, as she refers to it, actually winds up improving a species’ adaptations to environmental constraints – mathematical algorithms have shown this, she says. From this she concludes that directionality can indeed be a characteristic of evolution, something very in line with theistic religious beliefs.
10. How does Littlewood's theory of large number help explainmiracles or supposed divine coincidences?
According to Littlewood’s theory, the probability of experiencing an event perceived as miraculous is approximately one in 35 days, since we are experiencing a gazillion of things just in one day. Littlewood's theory is based on mathematical calculations about the frequency with which disparate events can occur in synch. This is an application of the theory of very large numbers, which says that something otherwise uncommon appears often as the population N gets large enough, the number of events experienced being the N in this case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/Littlewood’s_Law
11. Discuss in this essay the pseudosciences: what are a couple ofreasons people turn to them and what are some key problems withthem? Take two or more pseudosciences and apply Ockham's razor(define the term first) to them.
According to the Skeptic’s Dictionary website, a pseudoscience can be defined as a group of ideas claiming to be scientific when they in fact are not. Some examples are astrology, the Bible code, telekinesis and parapsychology, etc. For a theory to be scientific, it must be grounded in methological naturalism, that is, it must not allude to or make any supernatural claims; it must be testable, empirically verifiable, able to be proven false, and predictions that broaden the understanding of the natural world must arise from it.
Why is it that in our modern, scientifically-minded world, people still turn to the pseudosciences? As one would expect, there is not one definite answer to this question and it all boils down to each individual’s case. However, a few common reasons will be discussed.
- Some people are simply ignorant about the falsehood of such doctrines, perhaps because they have been brought up in a milieu where current scientific understanding is not widespread or accessible, e.g. the
People may have been brought up with religious beliefs that either require or ease the adoption of a pseudoscientific explanation. For example, creationism is an attempt to fit scientific data with a literal understanding of Genesis, but to accomplish this, facts are forged and conflicting knowledge is discarded. Depending on how fervent their religiosity is and the extent to which the true scientific explanation contradicts their religion/worldview/beliefs/ideology (or worse, makes them untenable), people compartmentalize scientific knowledge and pseudoscience. Another example is the practice of trepanation which is more likely to be embraced by a person who believes in the immortality of the soul and the afterlife. In general, it can be argued that those who hold supernatural beliefs are more prone to believe in a pseudoscience.
Sometimes people simply believe in something for comfort, even if they are conscious that they believe in something that is false when it is too painful to accept reality.
Ockam’s Razor was a part of William of Ockam’s philosophy of nominalism. It is often stated as "do not multiply entities beyond necessity". Though his philosophy is considered valid by few nowadays, the razor became a necessary aspect of the scientific method. Basically, out of two competing explanations of a phenomenon, the one that postulates the least entities and makes the least assumptions is preferable.
Let us take the astrology as an example. Instead of thinking that mystical forces that determine our destiny emanate from astral bodies, it is more parsimonious to think that a chain of events comprising our actions and our interactions with others and our surroundings explains why things happen to us the way they do.
Now let’s consider intelligent design. One can assume there is a designer that acts by unknown (and perhaps unknowable) mechanisms in concert with the laws of nature to generate the different structures found in living organisms. However, one explains the same thing with fewer entities by postulating that natural selection and genetic variation, all by themselves can account for the existence of all life forms.
http://www.skepdic.com/pseudosc.html
12. Why does Darwinian evolution make atheism both respectable andtenable? Why was Charles Darwin agnostic about God and Christianity?
Prior to
It is in this regard that Charles Darwin became an agnostic.
13. Why does Richard Dawkins believe that religion is a virus of themind? Be specific in explaining meme theory and also explain whyDawkins' theory contradicts certain revelatory religions, likeJudaism, Christianity, and Islam?
A meme, or idea, according to memetics, is a pattern of information that has evolved to a form that induces its host organism to repeat the pattern. In this way, the organism is the meme’s vehicle for replicate itself in analogy to how a gene perpetuates itself according to a selfish-gene perspective. Religion man’s first attempt at explaining the world prior to the advancement of science, and those religions whose teachings encouraged their adherents to proselytize and conquer heathens, or to have more offspring to raise in the fold of their parent’s beliefs, had an advantage over those that did not. This explains evangelism and beliefs such as Catholicism’s prohibition of contraception, as well as religious intolerance seen in various faiths. Religions that claimed to be revealed from a deity and created sacred texts to compile in writing their core teachings would be more successful at perpetuating their existence over time, and beliefs such as the afterlife and the doctrine of hell gave people reason to fear not converting to them. Thus, according to Dawkins’ theory, the truth claims a religion makes are not references to reality, but merely catchy nonsense.
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMIN.html
14. How would a religious believer respond to Richard Dawkins'notion that religion is more akin to a mind parasite than anaccurate description or approach to reality? Clue: think of OwenGingerich or Freeman Dyson, etc
By pointing out that atheism would also be a meme according to Dawkins’ theory. If so, who is to say that religion is deleterious without impugning their own views? Why can’t one say that skepticism evolved to give people unwarranted confidence in the power of their own reason and intellectual abilities in an otherwise chaotic world? Scientific facts are neither right nor wrong, so how could Dawkins qualify one meme as a virus if atheism would also be an idea "infecting" hosts to replicate itself.
Furthermore, one could point out a distinction between memetics and other new biological approaches to behavior. Evolutionary psychology and affective neuroscience provide room for epigenetic shaping of behavior since they take the brain’s modularity for granted. Memetics, on the other hand, postulated a horizontal transfer of memes from host to host. This is more than anything a new version of the outdated theory of Lamarckism. If memes really are the psychological analogue of genes, one would expect that they proceed by the same mechanism of vertical transfer of information. When memetics tries to incorporate brain modularity into its theory, it shoots itself in the foot, for if the memes originate from modules, it is the module, not the meme that provided a trait that was selected for. Thus, it would not be the meme itself that is infecting new hosts, but the specificity of the module that has made it thrive and produce behavior most favorable to the particular environment.
15. Here is the topic: How did the world come into being? In otherwords, how was the universe created? Present two different set ofanswers to that question based on a creationist who believes inintelligent design (even if partially evolutionary) and one based onprobability theory (think Wolfram, for instance) and evolution. Besure to be accurate to each perspective and be sure to document yoursummaries. Finally, who do you think would present the mostpersuasiveanswer/argument?
- The creationist would argue that God created the physical laws that govern our universe:
From the complexity of a galaxy to the precise cosmological constants needed for life as we know it to exist, one can see that the universe has been fine-tuned by a Supreme Being. Existence is an ontological primary, and since evidence supports that time and space themselves began to exist from a singularity at the Big Bang expansion, one cannot think that they came from nothingness, since nothingness is a non-concept. Rather, God set the Big Bang in motion, and the universe’s evolution has proceeded in accordance with the Deity’s governance. Biological evolution via natural selection is a valid way of explaining the diversity and relatedness of life forms on the planet, but it cannot account for all structures because some of them are irreducibly complex, whether at the molecular or macro level. That is to say, if one removes one of the structure’s parts, the whole structure becomes useless. It was then the Intelligent Designer (i.e. God) who "tweaked" the evolutionary process to surmount these obstacles. Furthermore, some characteristics of the human experience, such as consciousness or morality, can only be explained by invoking a supernatural creator.
The physicalist/skeptic would argue that natural laws are all that is needed to explain every phenomenon known to humans:
First off, there may be an infinite number of universes created from endlessly bifurcating vacuum fluctuations, rendering ours nothing but trivial. The question of what preceded the Big Bang is meaningless, given that space-time must exist for some thing to precede another, yet time was created at the Big Bang. If there really were something before the Big Bang, the laws of physics that operate on our universe would be different from those prior to the cosmic expansion. Thus, one could think of existence as being eternal, as the process of being would never have a start or an end; it would merely be an indefinite, perhaps cyclic, course of one universe expanding and then collapsing into another universe. Energy would neither be created nor destroyed, and the underlying processes, being quantum mechanical in nature, would indeed be possible to get something out of nothing.
The existence of life can be explained sufficiently well by abiogenesis. This planet had all the materials necessary for life to exist. Its early conditions allowed for the synthesis of organic molecules from inorganic matter; some of these molecules were self-replicating, and from then on they were subject to the mechanism of natural selection. But going beyond evolution, applying Wolfram’s postulate one can discern that this universe’s complexity is inherent in the set of parameters (the sub-atomic level) that it can be reduced to in its most minimal form. Therefore, no god is necessary to describe why this universe is the way it is.
I consider the scientific argument the only persuasive choice.
16. According to Stephen Jay Gould, religion and science can indeedget along. Dawkins suggest the opposite. Elaborate on theGould/Dawkins debate and who do you think wins the discussion?
According to Dawkins, the popular idea that religion and science are converging is a complete farce. In his view, this misconception has become so widespread in part because of scientists who use religious language to describe their worldviews while not being anything other than atheists or agnostics in reality. People sometimes confuse awe and amazement towards science and nature with religion, he contends, and such sloppy definition of religion does nothing but blur the true meaning of the word. It is frequently argued that religion and science are complementary because they touch on different aspects of life. More specifically, religion addresses existential questions whereas science is concerned with explaining the physical laws the universe operates on. Dawkins says that this is an inexistent division, that there is no reason to think there are any "why" questions as opposed to "how" questions, and that even if there exist matters beyond the scope of science to answer, there has never been any indication whatsoever that religion could answer them effectively. It is just as reasonable to believe in a teapot orbiting the earth as it is in any religious doctrine. Just because a doctrine does not contradict what is known about the world, it is not a rational alternative. The lack of evidence for it makes believing in it irrational. Moreover, in so far as religion makes claims about the material world, such as what was before the Big Bang, the Flood story, etc. it is vulnerable to scientific criticism, and one finds out that indeed. It is this type of claims that are at the very root of religion and conflict is unavoidable.
According to Gould, religion and science are "non-overlapping magisteria", that is to say, they pertain to different domains of knowledge. Religion’s turf is questions regarding "meaning, purpose, value". Science concerns itself with the study of the properties that make up the natural world. Both domains are just as relevant, he contends. To counter Dawkins, Gould says that those religious beliefs that step on science’s ground are not truly religious, but pseudoscientific. For a belief to be religious it must consign itself with explaining the supra-natural world, not the physical one. Likewise, while science can provide acumen into matters of meaning or ethics, it cannot answer this type of questions, as they are within the scope of religion.
In my opinion, Dawkins is right in saying that people, especially scientists, should not be sloppy when describing their beliefs or lack thereof by twisting the meanings of religious words to the point that they sound ambiguous and mislead others about what they think. However, I agree with Gould that, in principle, his thesis allows for the accommodation of religiosity and scientific coherence without contradiction. The problem is, though, that the issue is not so clear cut. A religious belief may not appear to be making any factual assertions, and may not be in contradiction with the body of scientific knowledge of the present time, but might end up doing so once new scientific discoveries have been made. So, Gould’s thesis is more persuasive in my view, but it is in serious need of enhancement as well.
http://www.forbes.com/asap/1999/1004/235.html
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Catalano/the_g_files.shtml
17. Why does your teacher repeatedly argue that it is naive (and most often wrong) to "confuse neurology for ontology." Explain andgive a specific example to back up your essay.
We can only sense the world the way our brains are wired to perceive things, yet we often confuse our sensory experience for reality as it is in itself. For example, we can only see a very tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, yet that does not mean the rest is not there. Religion exploits this fact to come up with metaphysical extravagancies that purport to explain the world and provide comfort to people. An example would be rage being attributed as demon possession.
18. Quantum theorists have discovered that the only accurate way todescribe the subatomic world is by probabilities, particularly asoutlined by Werner Heisenberg and his principle of uncertaintyrelations. How can a physical understanding of the world based onchance/randomness/chaos be RECONCILED with a theological view thatthe universe was designed and displays purpose? Or, is such areconciliation impossible? Substantiate your argument.
Two approaches:
The Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics takes the uncertainty relation to be an epistemological, not an ontological question. Since an electron is very small compared to objects we are accustomed to, the energy required to measure its momentum is enough to create an infinitely narrow stake in the position wave packet, and viceversa. This does not mean that there is a fundamental impossibility in measuring both with complete certainty, but only a practical one. Further, according to Bohmian mechanics, the wave-particle duality and wavefunction collapse problems are resolved by considering a subatomic particle as a point mass that is guided by its wave. Thus, instead of being in a limbo state before being measured, the particle has a definite position and momentum all throughout. Hence, determinism is saved in the quantum world, and nature at its very core need not be ruled by chance.
Granting the standard
19. In what specific ways does Faqir Chand help to explain WHYcertain people have religious experiences and others do not. Howdoes Faqir Chand's view of religion underline or support a purelysociological view of religion as meaning function?
Many people have attributed their fortunes to the guru Faqir Chand’s strong spirituality. Some even have claimed that they have had visions of him talking to them and guiding them to the right path. Meanwhile, Faqir Chand vehemently denies having caused or even being aware of any of their occurrences. Instead, he thinks it is people’s own piety and faith that makes them prone to find relief, either from categorical anxieties, or mere temporary issues, in the form of revelations and other religious experiences. In actuality, it is the mind that creates the religious experience, and due to the believer’s own neurology, he has experiences that confirm his belief. Since the non-believer does not have such bias, he is not prone to have that kind of experiences.
http://www.geocities.com/eckcult/cultexpose/visions.html
20. What is Nietzsche's notion of the myth of the eternal return andhow could such an idea potentially transform one's day to day life?In what ways is it completely contrary to religious notions of anafterlife? The myth of eternal recurrence runs like this: Suppose that after death, you would re-live this life exactly the same as the original time. That is to say, having identical experiences, with the same people, the same places, same everything, and after you died that time, you would re-live the same life again and again eternally. This would be horrific, for every experience would be cheapened to the point of possessing absolutely no value at all. Nietzsche is trying to point out that in hoping for an afterlife, we end up devaluing the only life we are certain of. If we live like there is no life after death, we cherish to the maximum every happening in our life, since we will not get to experience anything like it after we are gone. This can also be extended to mean that in some cases people commit atrocities and follies exclusively as an extension of their religious/spiritual beliefs, whereas those who do not hold those ideas prudently caliber their actions, since their current existence is their sole preoccupation.
http://www.meskot.com/recurrence.htm
21. Why is Edward O. Wilson arguing for a consilience between thehumanities and the sciences? The boundaries between different sciences are rapidly vanishing. Since we live in a physical universe, there is no reason to believe that the social sciences and humanities cannot be reduced to natural science. Thus, there is no alternative to consilience. More importantly, there is no reason to believe the social sciences would not profit from this amalgamation. On the contrary, literacy in science is needed to elucidate and solve the majority of problems that affect the public sphere – war, environmental pollution, sexual ethics, poverty, etc… Abandoning an entrenched view of the disciplines is required to arrive at an accurate description of reality, one that is not perverted by ideologies and/or superstitions. It is scientists’ duty to educate the world and reclaim objectivity as their forte, in juxtaposition with post-modernist philosophies which claim that such knowledge cannot be reached. For these reasons, it is imperative for individuals who want to be competitive in our modern world of widespread instantaneous information to be able to interpret the information concisely and apply that knowledge in ways that would be most useful and productive. The same holds true for political leaders, who are regrettably for the most part not very informed in these areas nowadays. They ought to accept consilience in order make wise decisions for the people.
22. How would Freeman Dyson and Owen Gingerich respond to skepticsin the Beyond Belief Conference?
- Neil Degrasse Tyson says that religious feeling arises when man reaches the boundaries of his knowledge. This is a ubiquitous tendency, displayed by the common person and the intellectual alike. He mentions Ptolemy, Galileo and
What is needed is for faith to be disfavored and investigation adopted. It is discovery that drives economies. There is absolutely no indication of purpose or design in the universe, unless one includes bad design. Examples of this are: the universe cools as it expands until it will be unsuitable for life, natural disasters, disease, birth defects, etc.
- Freeman Dyson would start by pointing out that there is a great emotional aspect to religions, given that they are long traditions that have lasted for centuries. Moreover, there is too much weirdness at the subatomic level for scientists to state with certainty that the material world is a self-containing machine. At the quantum level, the world seems to make choices of its own, which could point in the direction of an underlying elementary form of consciousness. Further, since mind exists at our level, one could think of God as a consciousness that is found throughout the cosmos at a higher level. It is perplexing that, contrary to what Degrasse alludes to, the universe possesses this great diversity, something truly interesting. In addition, one can wonder why it is so hospitable to life. Mechanisms like natural selection need to already have something to work on, and God could be the explanation to why things in this universe are built so that these mechanisms can operate on them. Ultimately, however, religion is about providing the ultimate meaning to life, and as such, is separate from the scientific realm. Likewise, one should be careful not to stretch the explicative scope of science. If being religious makes more sense to a person, there is nothing wrong about that since religion and science need not necessarily be at odds with each other.
- Owen Gingerich would add that the fact that this universe can be understood is also intriguing. What seems like a screw-up, that there is no element of 5 amu, in fact allows for this abundance of oxygen and carbon, which are the main components of life as we know it. According to Gingerich, the only way to get around the anthropic principle is to say that there is something intrinsic to the nature of this universe that necessarily makes it the way it is (Wolfram, anyone?). This position is pretty much approaching the issue from a different angle, but at this point the skeptic’s position is, like the theist’s, one of faith, since neither explanation can be proven.
Source: Videos on neuralsurfer website.
23. If biological life can be understood reductively, as Watson andCrick have suggested, what necessity is there to posit a belief is aSupreme Creator? Be sure to back up your argument with pertinentreferences and/or quotes.
There is no necessity; however, the two issues are not contradictory. Most people will continue to believe in God because they are not satisfied with the answers naturalism gives to matters usually regarded as belonging to metaphysics and logic. For example, questions such as those of meaning, existence, or the nature of causation, to a name a few, are not answered, in their eyes, by postulating that there exist properties of our (material) world that are brute facts requiring no further explanation.
More importantly, though, is that one should turn to physics and cosmology, not biology, to see whether atheism can properly account for this universe’s existence. Here the theist might provide the following line of reasoning:
Cosmological arguments are sometimes presented as evidence that theism/deism has become obsolete. It is stated that the Big Bang was nothing but the result of a vacuum fluctuation from a greater whole, a bubble of space-time emerging from a pan-universe. While this hasn’t been ruled out per se, it poses more questions than it solves. For instance, a corollary of the Big Bang is the grand-scale smoothness of the cosmos, yet it is difficult to envision how amplification of virtual particles via fluctuations would bring about the overall homogeneous density and temperature of the universe, as evinced by the uniformity of the blackbody radiation. Further, given that cyclic and infinite views of the universe have fallen out of favor, the question of what was the uncaused cause at the start of causality still remains. Since it has not been shown that the universe could be the first cause, one can resort to God for an answer.
References: - The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg
- Ancient Light by Alan Lightman
Again, this by no means shows that God-belief is a logical necessity – it isn’t regardless of whether life can be explained reductively or not. The point is that not all arguments for believing in God would be rendered useless.
24. So far, what is your favorite reading and why? I like Nietzsche’s prose, but I disagree with the way he interprets Christianity, as well as his take on morality. In my opinion, if Nietzsche’s idea of the ubermensch is taken to its logical conclusion, he simply cannot provide a good reason why one shouldn’t step on other people to achieve one’s own goals. Overall though, I would say The End of Faith is my favorite book because it does not get into deriding and insulting people’s beliefs, and presents clear argumentation. It is hard to disagree with his central thesis, that depending on how illogical one’s foundation is, the more probable it becomes that one will end up committing an atrocity. However, I would say he deals with the issue too superficially, to discern the factors that led a person to engage in an act of terrorism, one also has to study the milieu from which they come as well as their personal experience, instead of making broad generalizations.
25. Is there anything that science cannot explain?
So far, science cannot adequately explain the process of concept formation. Even if in the future the neurophysiology underlying most cerebral processes is understood in excruciating detail, the concept in our minds and the brain state that caused it are not one and the same. The age-old problem of universals is still not resolved, at least not by science. However, almost anything one can think of that used to be a mystery seemed to be unexplainable by science at some point, until scientific advancements were able to explain the phenomenon. So, even though the current approach does not seem to resolve the question I cannot say that one day it won’t, but then again, what do I know?
26. What is the favorite thing you learned so far? That our professor came up with a hypothesis to explain away glossolalia after overhearing a couple in the heat of passion.
Be STOKED! Extra Credit questions will be added later
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)