11 year old not allowed to join Scouts as atheist

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Meyrl, many competent scientists proceed through their analyses under the assumption that the divine has granted a "window of stability" under which the laws of the universe may be within the grasp of the human mind.

 

So they assume a magic user exists that doesn't bother to do any magic. Or maybe 101 magic users who never do anything. Why assume any exist at all, if they never do anything?

 

Why this is allowed, well that's a matter for theologians.

 

It's so when this magic user never does anything, there's no shattering of people's illusions.

[qwazse]

It's more that the universe is the magic: it's so pervasive and frequent as to be taken for granted.

 

Their ability to grasp it at this place and time is an act of grace by the creator. (The scientists I know use a singular reference, I suppose others may use plural. Haven't met one yet.)

 

Moreover, they insist that their discoveries compelled them toward their creator. Not away.

[AZMike]

"AZ: If evolution is "directed", wouldn't God then be able to "experiment"? One type of organism doesn't quite fit the bill , try another.

I forget who I read that commented that God created man because he was dissatisfied with the monkey. "

 

Theologically, that statement makes no sense under the doctrine of prolepsis. I think God is very satisfied with the monkeys...

 

There is also a problem with different definitions of what "random" means. In natural selection, it is used in a very different sense than "arbitrary."

 

Macrospecies evolution is a natural physical process like erosion or volcanism, and would presumably be used to order and structure our world. God seemed to have created a world that would run on its own most of the time, with the omniscient foreknowledge of how it would ultimately result. It could be tweaked at certain points by God, and I would argue that the three points in the history of our universe where God directly intervened instead of using natural processes to change things would be the creation of the universe itself, the beginning of life, and the creation of the human soul - all points at which scripture uses a distinct word for "create" rather than "form," and all events that are difficult to explain using a purely materialist view of reality.

 

 

[SeattlePioneer]

Does anyone imagine that they are going to convince someone on the other side of the creation/evolution divide of the merits of their argument?

 

 

The amusing part of this is that those advocates of science are mostly not scientists, but those repeating the dogma of science, just as those who are religious are repeating the dogma of religion they have absorbed.

 

The catechism of science is on display here!(This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

I think the amusing part are the religious ones who use religious terms like "dogma" in referring to scientific theories, as if terminology puts religious myths and scientific theories on equal footing.

[SSScout]

Let me understand, here, prolepsis is the idea of something happening NOW because something should or needs to happen LATER?

 

So evolution is the defining of how/why something happened THEN because something needs to happen NOW? Therefore, since the Creator wanted something to happen THEN (human souls), he needed to direct his evolutionary forces NOW (which was THEN, NOW) so that the proper things would happen LATER?

 

I tried to get my Scouts to see that I had a whole lot of THEN and they had a whole lot of LATER. I had more THEN than they did, they had more LATER than I did. We both had the same amount of NOW. I had some of then nodding their heads, some of them arching eyebrows, some of then just silently thinking "uh-huh, suuuure..".

 

 

 

The idea that God set up the rules of the universe and then stepped back to let it run, I think, is called Deism. Is that also some of wht we are talking about? Trying to make Sense of it all?

[AZMike]

SSSCout: "Let me understand, here, prolepsis is the idea of something happening NOW because something should or needs to happen LATER? So evolution is the defining of how/why something happened THEN because something needs to happen NOW? Therefore, since the Creator wanted something to happen THEN (human souls), he needed to direct his evolutionary forces NOW (which was THEN, NOW) so that the proper things would happen LATER?"

 

No.

 

[BSA24]

>>>>>

BSA24, the process is neither random, nor arbitrary. Selective forces wouldn't be 'selective' if they were random.

 

[packsaddle]

If you think tides, seasons, diel cycles, forest fires, volcanoes, and climate processes are random, then you haven't grasped some basic selective forces. If tsunamis were completely random, for example, Japan would be no more likely to experience one than, say, Iowa. They aren't random. They are constrained by the tectonic activity that produces them and the configuration of the coasts that are affected. The inability to predict is not the same thing as 'random'. (but until there is a coastline fronting on an ocean in Iowa, I can predict with a probability of 1 that Iowa is not going to experience a tsunami.)

 

I agree that the 'intelligent actor' isn't invoked by many biologists but this depends on how you define 'intelligent actor'. This has been particularly true since the Reagan administration. Have I given the impression that such a thing exists?

 

By the way, roaches CAN be killed with gamma rays. They can withstand far more than we can but as Mythbusters showed empirically, 100,000 rads will kill them all. (where is PETA when you need them?)

 

Edit: I almost forgot the comment about species not adapting. They don't and species don't evolve either. Populations evolve and populations adapt.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[SeattlePioneer]

Hello Merlyn,

 

 

>

 

 

Sorry to disabuse you, but I am not a religious person.

 

 

But YOU are not a cool user of science in these discussions, nor are others arguing for science.

 

The frankly religious have a clear conception of what is sacred for them, but those arguing for science prefer to deny that they have often adopted science as a god, as something that is sacred.

 

Therefore when science is attacked, they respond in a heated and angry way just as the frankly religious do when their conception of the sacred is violated.

 

It's the same impulse --- a firm conception of what a person regards as being sacred. It's easy to see that those worshiping a religious deity and those worshiping science argue in much the same emotional ways, because they are doing much the same thing, and for the same reasons.

 

 

My experience in talking with real scientists is that they usually do not react in these emotional ways. Of course, they are the ones actually DOING science. They don't need to reduce science to a sacred concept.

 

[BSA24]

>>>>>

If you think tides, seasons, diel cycles, forest fires, volcanoes, and climate processes are random, then you haven't grasped some basic selective forces. If tsunamis were completely random, for example, Japan would be no more likely to experience one than, say, Iowa. They aren't random

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

SeattlePioneer, your "mind-reading" act continues to fail. Sorry, I don't worship science OR imaginary superbeings, but anyone using terms like "dogma" to describe scientific theories is talking nonsense.

[BSA24]

>>>>

The frankly religious have a clear conception of what is sacred for them, but those arguing for science prefer to deny that they have often adopted science as a god, as something that is sacred.

 

[qwazse]

I don't think such churches will produce any astronauts, nor any cures for cancer. They've basically pulled themselves out of the gene pool for productive thought and instead decided to feel good about themselves.

 

You're mistaken. I've met some quite competent creationists in some leading edge fields of science. They tend to be engineers. So the next respirator you need or the next time you stare out your airplane window, consider that at least a few of the parts were invented by young earth theorists. You really don't need to believe that this world has prattled on in this fashion for billions of years to be able to work with the laws it is subject to now.

 

The problem as I see it is not one for fields of science but one for the churches. Folks who are confident in their faith because someone told them a contrarian world view supports it might not actually believe in the God of the natural world.