The great Church debate!

Bollox.
Like the premise bandied about elsewhere "you have to be a musician to appreciate music"?
You'll tell me next that only F1 drivers can watch a GP , you have to be a novelist to get a book out of the library, etc etc.

BigH, Are you saying you are not among the highest life forms?

I think you are!

Just getting little yah-boo going over in the other thread if you feellike piling in...

I've not contributed to this thread, since I don't really care what others believe in. Happy for us all to establish a personal take on it.

My concern with many schools of religion is that if there is a god and he doesn't like the smell of: gay people, tarty people, people who swear, people who masturbate often and with relish, pork chops, people who drink, women, condoms, women's hair and recreational use of fine herbs...then I have an enemy at the highest level. Pass me a glove and let me smite the rotter.

If on the other hand there is a god, and he likes good people whatever they choose to do with their genitals, enjoys a good night out and has the first Ramones album...then I may consider his request for supper.

quote:

If on the other hand there is a god, and he likes good people whatever they choose to do with their genitals, enjoys a good night out and has the first Ramones album...then I may consider his request for supper.

It is posible to retain a faith even if one mostly [paradoxical smiley] falls into the above group ... The Ramones excepted [massive smiley] ...

ATB from George

The person who falls into the set of perfection actually is already a Saint!

Mat, I like your style

quote:

Originally posted by Mat Cork:
I've not contributed to this thread, since I don't really care what others believe in. Happy for us all to establish a personal take on it.

My concern with many schools of religion is that if there is a god and he doesn't like the smell of: gay people, tarty people, people who swear, people who masturbate often and with relish, pork chops, people who drink, women, condoms, women's hair and recreational use of fine herbs...then I have an enemy at the highest level. Pass me a glove and let me smite the rotter.

If on the other hand there is a god, and he likes good people whatever they choose to do with their genitals, enjoys a good night out and has the first Ramones album...then I may consider his request for supper.

Matt, that is the finest post i've read since joining this forum

Should we ever meet i'll stand you a giant megaburger. Paul.

quote:

Happy for us all to establish a personal take on it.

Exactly..... and not to ram those personal takes down the throats of others. (not suggesting YOU would, but others might)

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Mat Cork:
My concern with many schools of religion is that if there is a god and he doesn't like the smell of: gay people, tarty people, people who swear, people who masturbate often and with relish, pork chops, people who drink, women, condoms, women's hair and recreational use of fine herbs...then I have an enemy at the highest level. Pass me a glove and let me smite the rotter.

If on the other hand there is a god, and he likes good people whatever they choose to do with their genitals, enjoys a good night out and has the first Ramones album...then I may consider his request for supper.

Well, God loves the core being of who we are, but not necessarily what we do.

Its up to us where our eternal heart lies.

Andrew Randle

quote:

Originally posted by Andrew Randle:

quote:

Originally posted by Mat Cork:
My concern with many schools of religion is that if there is a god and he doesn't like the smell of: gay people, tarty people, people who swear, people who masturbate often and with relish, pork chops, people who drink, women, condoms, women's hair and recreational use of fine herbs...then I have an enemy at the highest level. Pass me a glove and let me smite the rotter.

If on the other hand there is a god, and he likes good people whatever they choose to do with their genitals, enjoys a good night out and has the first Ramones album...then I may consider his request for supper.

Well, God loves the core being of who we are, but not necessarily what we do.

Its up to us where our eternal heart lies.

Andrew Randle

Are you on a long term wind up or a professional god botherer by any chance?

I've never heard any sane creature speak with such confidence/arrogance regarding your god's intentions. Are you an official spokesman? Does the Vatican beg your advice?

Does God?

Seriously fellow your piety is repulsive beyond my feeble descriptive skills, you genuinely make me feel a little ill.

quote:

Originally posted by Trevp:

quote:

Originally posted by Sniper:
The point about Dawkins is he offers Natural Selection as an ultimate explanation for evolution driven by that is essentially (wait for it) a non-random random process - when seen from a quantum perspective this is shown to be wrong.

Sniper,
You have misquoted Dawkins. I think that the original quotation is as follows:

"Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators."

I do not see any conflict with anything in quantum theory in this statement.

You say that your points stand or fall on their merits and not your position in the academic world. They do not appear to have much merit from my perspective, especially if you cannot understand the difference between what you quoted Dawkins as saying and what he actually said. If I have misjudged this, please give the reference for the "quote" that is in your post.

Actually I was not quoting Dawkins at all or I would have put inverted commas around 'non-random random process' thus. I was merely describing the process Dawkins believes underpins natural selection but even if I were quoting Dawkins it would not be fair of you to assume I was mis-quoting him based on the fact you are familiar with something else he wrote (possibly in another book)which bares some similarity.

Anyway to plod on with some of Dawkins actual words taken from The Blind Watchmaker....

According to Dawkins, living biological organisms are characterised by a complexity of organisation that is goal oriented towards ‘working’ to stay alive and ‘propagate genes. However I think it is fair to say he is ambiguous about his use of the idea of ‘chance’ in this process. He is at great pains to refute the idea that the kind of chance involved in Darwinism is ‘blind’ or ‘random’, even though the title of his first hit book, was of course The Blind Watchmaker in which he says:

‘The great majority of people that attack Darwinism leap with almost
unseemly eagerness to the mistaken idea that there is nothing other
than random chance in it’

‘We have seen that living things are too improbable and too
‘beautifully designed’ to have come into existence by chance’.

‘…people, …. Often expert in their own field … seem sincerely to
believe that Darwinism explains living organisation in terms of
chance – ‘single step selection’ – alone. This belief, that Darwinian
evolution is ‘random’, is not merely false. It is the exact opposite of
the truth. Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but
the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is
quintessentially non-random’.

According to Dawkins, then, certain people, who are ‘often expert in their
own field’, which implies, of course, that they are completely incompetent at
evaluating the veracity of ultra-Darwinian theory, miss the crucial distinction
between ‘single step selection’ and ‘cumulative selection’. Single step
selection is, according to Dawkins, ‘random chance’ whereas cumulative
selection is a kind of randomness which, believe it or not, is ‘quintessentially
non-random’. You did read that correctly! According to Dawkins,
Darwinian evolution is a process of non-random chance or as I said earlier non-random randomness. This process (Dawkins tells us – despite being an expert in his field) is one of:

‘gradual step by step transformations from simple beginnings, from
primordial entities sufficiently simple to have come into existence by
chance. Each successive change in the gradual evolutionary process
was simple enough, relative to its predecessor, to have arisen by
chance. But the whole sequence of cumulative steps constitutes
anything but a chance process when you consider the complexity of
the final end product relative to its starting point’.

According to Dawkins each little step of the process is a chance event.
However because the end result is a complex organisation, which has been
directed by ‘non-random survival’, whatever that may be, ‘cumulative
selection’ is ‘a fundamentally non-random process’; in other words an
accumulation of chance ‘single selections’ add up to a non-random
‘cumulative selection’ if the end result is sufficiently complex. Presumably
if the end result just looks random then it still is random. Going a step
further, it must be the case that a process made up of a sequence of steps is to
be considered random or not on the basis of the end result, not on the basis
the nature of the steps themselves. We can conclude that a couple of chance
events will probably add up to a chance process but a large number of
chance events can miraculously produce a completely non-random result.

Now this is presumably the type of Magic that FlyMe would have no truck with?

Dawkins offers a few examples to try and gee us into his mode of
paradoxical thinking. The simplest example is that of a hole which is able to
sort balls into those bigger than it and those smaller. This analogy is meant
to illustrate a system generating non-randomness by a non-intentional
‘random’ natural mechanism. This thinking leads Dawkins to his notion of a
natural sieve. Dawkins thinks of ‘natural selection’ as a kind of sieve
through which the single step chance events of evolution are sequentially fed
through:

‘the result of one sieving process are fed into a subsequent sieving,
which is fed into …, and so on’.

The random jiggling of the sea of endless possibility, thrown up by the
chance workings of completely non-conscious, non-intentional molecular
interactions endlessly ordered, in small gradual steps, by the taming influence
of the natural sieve.

But where does the sieve come from? In the example of the balls and the hole,
for instance, the hole is external to the random system of balls waiting to be
ordered. The theory of evolution, if it is to claim an ultimate significance,
should be self-contained, that is to say it should apply to the universe as a
whole, without recourse to external agencies. This is, after all, exactly the
kind of metaphysical requirement that Dawkins appeals to in his refutation of
the notion of a creator God. And the fact that Dawkins does consider his
vision to have ultimate metaphysical relevance is clearly apparent; he tells
us, for instance, that:

‘Darwinism is true, not just on this planet but all over the universe
wherever life may be found’. (Yes, the mind of Dawkins pervades the whole universe!)

The sieve, therefore, must be internal to, a part of, the evolutionary process.
Another alternative is that the sieve is already in place, waiting expectantly
for emergent life to make a bid for survival so to speak.

The only other possibility is that the sieve is generated by the very
process which Dawkins is trying to explain by means of the sieve; which
means that the sieve must be itself generated by its own process of
sieving!

If we get rid of the sieve as we surely must, what are we left with? Who will be the first to post the answer to this important question?

quote:

Originally posted by FlyMe:
A quote from Wikki (not the most relaiable of sources!)

" In his Skeptic's Dictionary, Robert Todd Carroll stated, in an article highly critical of Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance, that "although Sheldrake commands some respect as a scientist because of his education and degree, he has clearly abandoned conventional science in favor of magical thinking."[36]

Sorry, magic doesn't do it for me.

Actually the theory of morphic resonance er resonates quite nicely with all kinds of stuff written by highly respected physicists including Schrodinger (one of the founding fathers of quantum theory)and John Wheeler and Henry Stapp...etc.

Tis often the way that it is the dullest, least subtle minds who are the quickest to call 'heresy'and how many times to do we see the heretics proved right in time? Yes, science has its own unthinking fundamentalists.

Hi Sniper

Science needs heretics, sure. Too much orthodoxy and the scientific enterprise stagnates - this is precisely the charge levelled against String Theory, by Lee Smolin in his excellent book, "The Trouble With Physics". However, heretics can only ever form a small proportion of the scientific community as a whole - otherwise entire disciplines would degenerate into chaos. Likewise, although a very small number of heretics will have revolutionary ideas that move science forward, the vast majority will simply turn out to be wrong.

I don't know much about Sheldrake, but I understand that he stands firmly outside the mainstream of biological thought. Nothing wrong with that, but, if you buy into his ideas, you must appreciate that you are taking long odds. I also get a bit weary of people invoking quantum uncertainty to explain things we don't currently understand. Having said all that, I'm intrigued enough by your discussion of the sieve analogy to do some Googling this weekend.

Regards
Nigel

quote:

Originally posted by Sniper:

According to Dawkins each little step of the process is a chance event.
However because the end result is a complex organisation, which has been
directed by ‘non-random survival’, whatever that may be, ‘cumulative
selection’ is ‘a fundamentally non-random process’; in other words an
accumulation of chance ‘single selections’ add up to a non-random
‘cumulative selection’ if the end result is sufficiently complex. Presumably
if the end result just looks random then it still is random. Going a step
further, it must be the case that a process made up of a sequence of steps is to
be considered random or not on the basis of the end result, not on the basis
the nature of the steps themselves. We can conclude that a couple of chance
events will probably add up to a chance process but a large number of
chance events can miraculously produce a completely non-random result.

Now this is presumably the type of Magic that FlyMe would have no truck with?

Sniper,

Thanks for your reply. However, your interpretation of what is being said in "The Blind Watchmaker" is somewhat different to mine.

Dawkins is actually describing two processes here i.e. the non-random process of survival which is of affected by external environmental factors and the random process of genetic mutation.

You seem to have some problem with order coming from a random process, but this is actually fundamental to understanding quantum mechanics. Let me give you such an example:

Decay of radioactive nuclei is an entirely random process. It is not possible to predict when a particular nucleus will decay - it might happen in the next second or in 20 or 30000 years. This process is also not influenced by external factors such as temperature or pressure. However, if we take the time-averaged rate of decay of isotopes of a particular element, this is non-random and very predictable. This value is the half-life of that isotope.

This is entirely consistent with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and is really very close to what Dawkins is writing about. It is in effect a series of random events that produces a non-random outcome.

All the best,
Trev

quote:

Originally posted by Andrew Randle:
Its up to us where our eternal heart lies.
Andrew Randle

Unless of course you're gay, tarty, black, into S&M etc etc.

quote:

Originally posted by droodzilla:
Hi Sniper

Science needs heretics, sure. Too much orthodoxy and the scientific enterprise stagnates - this is precisely the charge levelled against String Theory, by Lee Smolin in his excellent book, "The Trouble With Physics". However, heretics can only ever form a small proportion of the scientific community as a whole - otherwise entire disciplines would degenerate into chaos. Likewise, although a very small number of heretics will have revolutionary ideas that move science forward, the vast majority will simply turn out to be wrong.

I don't know much about Sheldrake, but I understand that he stands firmly outside the mainstream of biological thought. Nothing wrong with that, but, if you buy into his ideas, you must appreciate that you are taking long odds. I also get a bit weary of people invoking quantum uncertainty to explain things we don't currently understand. Having said all that, I'm intrigued enough by your discussion of the sieve analogy to do some Googling this weekend.

Regards
Nigel

Hello Nigel,

Again, I agree entirely with your post. However, regarding Dawkins' "sieve" metaphor, it is precisely that: a metaphor for the process of natural selection. It's not some form of magic. The environment is a hard taskmaster. Dawkins suggests that this process is likely to be a universal driving factor and that any life which formed on other planets would be driven by the same imperatives of survival in a less than benign environment. This (whilst of course it has not been proven), is a reasonable and logical hypothesis.

Trev

quote:

Decay of radioactive nuclei is an entirely random process. It is not possible to predict when a particular nucleus will decay - it might happen in the next second or in 20 or 30000 years. This process is also not influenced by external factors such as temperature or pressure. However, if we take the time-averaged rate of decay of isotopes of a particular element, this is non-random and very predictable. This value is the half-life of that isotope.

This is where science, and scientists reveal their best imagination, and their limitations.

The basic process is random. On a quantum scale, the entire proces is random. Stand back far enough and the ovearll process appears to be predictable.....but it isn't! yet for the sake of practicallity (lets call that engineering, just to use a different word to science) we can work with the "predictable" version of events.

Its not (much) different to plotting a neat straight line through a graph of random x,y points and claiming that we have found a linear relationship between two functions. Or plotting a perfect sine wave, when in reality the wave itself contains "noise" whose "peals and troughs" exceed the amplitude of the wave itself.

One day (possibly IMHO) scientists will get a lot closer to predicting events. At present, it is my personal opinion (ie just s guess), that mankind is nowhere near understanding how the universe ticks, never mind why!

btw, I am happy enough with the engineering derivitives of science to trust them every day with my life.

Cheers

Don

Hi Trev

A very helpful response. I don't think I'll be buying into Sheldrake's theories anytime soon, and am suspicious of attempts to explain mysterious "macro-level" phenomena by wheeling out the (alleged) mystery of quantum effects. However, I'm gonna play Devil's advocate because it's an interesting debate ...

The case of radioactive decay isn't quite analogous to the process of random mutuation coupled with natural selection. In the former case, the decay of each nucleus is an independent event, with a known probabilty distribution. From this information, and the laws of statistics it is straigtforward to calculate a precise value for the half life of a collection of identical nuclei - at least I imagine it's straightforward, if you know what you're doing! In other words, this is a case where it is easy to explain how order and certainty at the macro level emerge from randomness at the micro level.

I don't see any analogous explanation in the evolutionary case. I understand that, from the perspective of the individual genetic mutuation, the "sieve" is the environment the organism finds itself in. But as Sniper says, this is itself the product of yet more random happenstance. Why shouldn't the whole process just drift aimlessly, without ever giving rise to the high levels of organisation we see all around us today? I guess the easy answer is that, as a matter of fact, it hasn't, but it would be nice if there were an explanation for this.

There probably is, but Biology isn't really my area of science. Can anyone help out? Does "Climbing Mount Improbable" have the answer?

Thanks
Nigel

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:

quote:

Decay of radioactive nuclei is an entirely random process. It is not possible to predict when a particular nucleus will decay - it might happen in the next second or in 20 or 30000 years. This process is also not influenced by external factors such as temperature or pressure. However, if we take the time-averaged rate of decay of isotopes of a particular element, this is non-random and very predictable. This value is the half-life of that isotope.

This is where science, and scientists reveal their best imagination, and their limitations.

The basic process is random. On a quantum scale, the entire proces is random. Stand back far enough and the ovearll process appears to be predictable.....but it isn't! yet for the sake of practicallity (lets call that engineering, just to use a different word to science) we can work with the "predictable" version of events.

Its not (much) different to plotting a neat straight line through a graph of random x,y points and claiming that we have found a linear relationship between two functions. Or plotting a perfect sine wave, when in reality the wave itself contains "noise" whose "peals and troughs" exceed the amplitude of the wave itself.

One day (possibly IMHO) scientists will get a lot closer to predicting events. At present, it is my personal opinion (ie just s guess), that mankind is nowhere near understanding how the universe ticks, never mind why!

btw, I am happy enough with the engineering derivitives of science to trust them every day with my life.

Cheers

Don

Don,

Well said. I agree. Science is simply a series of iterations to get closer to our understanding of what's around us. It is highly probable that we will never fully understand how the universe works, but we keep trying. It always amuses me when politicians look to science for definitive answers.

However, lack of understanding does not provide any kind of basis for a belief in God as the answer to our unanswered questions.

Trev

quote:

Originally posted by droodzilla:
Hi Trev

A very helpful response. I don't think I'll be buying into Sheldrake's theories anytime soon, and am suspicious of attempts to explain mysterious "macro-level" phenomena by wheeling out the (alleged) mystery of quantum effects. However, I'm gonna play Devil's advocate because it's an interesting debate ...

The case of radioactive decay isn't quite analogous to the process of random mutuation coupled with natural selection. In the former case, the decay of each nucleus is an independent event, with a known probabilty distribution. From this information, and the laws of statistics it is straigtforward to calculate a precise value for the half life of a collection of identical nuclei - at least I imagine it's straightforward, if you know what you're doing! In other words, this is a case where it is easy to explain how order and certainty at the macro level emerge from randomness at the micro level.

I don't see any analogous explanation in the evolutionary case. I understand that, from the perspective of the individual genetic mutuation, the "sieve" is the environment the organism finds itself in. But as Sniper says, this is itself the product of yet more random happenstance. Why shouldn't the whole process just drift aimlessly, without ever giving rise to the high levels of organisation we see all around us today? I guess the easy answer is that, as a matter of fact, it hasn't, but it would be nice if there were an explanation for this.

There probably is, but Biology isn't really my area of science. Can anyone help out? Does "Climbing Mount Improbable" have the answer?

Thanks
Nigel

Hello again Nigel,

You make some interesting points here. I agree that my example was not completely analogous to the process of random mutation and natural selection (I just picked something fairly simple to explain how a non-random outcome could arise from a random event). For one thing random mutation is only pseudo random and is itself dependent on external factors such as background radiation, the presence of chemical mutagens etc and also the process of natural selection varies according to changes in environment. This makes things complicated. However, life has developed over many millions of years and even a small environmental advantage over this time period could make a large difference (in a similar vein, physicists have suggested that a very small imbalance in the amount of matter and anti-matter at the beginning of the universe has produced a universe composed almost entirely of matter and not anti matter). In terms of geological time, it's quite possible that environmental factors have remained stable enough to allow the natural selection/evolution process to progress. Biology isn't my area of science either so perhaps I'm waffling a bit here.

Trev

quote:

However, life has developed over many millions of years and even a small environmental advantage over this time period could make a large difference (in a similar vein, physicists have suggested that a very small imbalance in the amount of matter and anti-matter at the beginning of the universe has produced a universe composed almost entirely of matter and not anti matter).

Yes, this occurred to me too, and it's where I would start looking for an explanation.

Cheers
Nigel

Trev,

quote:

However, lack of understanding does not provide any kind of basis for a belief in God as the answer to our unanswered questions.

I agree, and I don't think I have ever indicated otherwise.

However, even a perfect knowledge of "how" our universe functions, wouldn't necessarily tell us "why" it so functions, let alone "why" it exists, or what lies beyond.

Despite all the "randomness" of the universe, mankind has developed. And with him for whatever reason, the concept of a possible "everlasting creator". I don't think mankind will ever know whether such an everlasting creator is real or not, nor the nature of such a "being" if it does exist. I simply have "faith" or "hope" that such a thing is real and, just as importantly, is kind. One thing for sure, is its a difficult concept to put into words, however "unrandom" those words might be.

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Mat Cork:

quote:

Originally posted by Andrew Randle:
Its up to us where our eternal heart lies.
Andrew Randle

Unless of course you're gay, tarty, black, into S&M etc etc.

Nice to have all sections of the community represented here, Mat.

Sister xx

Munch
I'm RC and married my wife ( Non Catholic ) in a Catholic Church and neither of us had to sign any forms related to the upbringing of future children.All we needed was verbal permission from the priest for my wife to be married in a Catholic Church.

Rgds,Toby