Here are some comments stuck in moderation during a blog brawl.


If someone has a hypothesis about the "intention of God," we can certainly test to see if the world is consistent or inconsistent with it. eric

Tell me how you would test that any phenomenon in the  physical universe happening as it does,  happens by the intention of God, which was, by the way, exactly what Deists claimed to believe as well as theists, possible intervention into the normal operation of the universe being one of their points of disagreement. Tell me how you would use science to falsify the contention that the universe operates as it does by the intention of God.

Go on, eric, support your claim by telling us how you could test that point with science because science is something that is done and not just asserted.  Or at least it's supposed to be that.

Many fundamentalists claim exactly this: that evolution is inconsistent with what they know about God.  eric

Evolution is as solid a fact as is known by science, it is the most massively supported fact revealed by science through evidence.  I'd put quantum physics as almost as impressively established, though not on the mass of evidence.  Biblical fundamentalists choose not to believe that, insisting that it's not true.  There's not much that you can do about that.

Non-fundamentalist believers accept that evolution is how species came into being from other species and many of them, if asked, would say that they believe that evolution is the way that God has produced the variety of life on Earth today.   That's what they believe.  Since they accept what science is able to tell about that, they have no belief that is inconsistent with science.

Some more aware believers would probably point out that evolutionary biology, even as accepted by atheists, is not a fixed body of knowledge but one that changes and develops because no one knows all that much about how evolution actually happens in great detail.  No person has a full knowledge of the universe, every single person's knowledge of it is incomplete at best, containing misconceptions, I'd say most likely.   You can look at the disagreements of atheists such as Wilson, Dawkins, Gould and Lewontin to see that (I'm more influenced by Lewontin, just in the interest of full disclosure),  so  even the most genuinely scientific of atheists know that.


Later:

I've been watching this thread for over a week...haven't commented on it until today,  Tlaz

Uh, huh.  I see.  I wonder if you've been blathering about it at Eschaton as you did during that brawl I mentioned above.  Perhaps some of your good buddies are also here undercover.  Hi.

colesblog, 1. produce the math you would use to be able to shove that claim of an alien visit into science. 2. send your paper to a reputable journal. 3. in the seeming unliklihood that it passes by the referees as anything but a spoof and is published. 4. stand by for the feedback from the relevant scientific communities.  Though why you don't use the example I mentioned of The Virgin Birth, as it is claimed by those who believe in it, to produce your "science" I wonder.  What kind of mathematics would you use to come up with the probability of a one-time miracle happening in the human species?   Jason, you have any suggestions as to how that could be done, as I asked on this blog several years back?

I've got no one problem with someone believing in flying saucers as long as they aren't cheating people out of money over it.  I'm not bothered by casual eccentricity, not when there's so much wackiness among the self-appointed defenders of science.

I've argued with neo-atheists more than enough to know that their pulling out the flying saucers, unicorns, elves, fairies and Zeus in an attempt to discredit their opponents by trying to associate them with pseudo-science (perhaps of a "Pagan" variety with the unicorns and elves) is an unvarying feature of these brawls.  Maybe I could do a statistical analysis of a valid selection of blog brawls of this type to see how likely it is that one will feature at least one of those canards.  That means "duck" Tlaz, if you need another alias.