Re: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/50521
Dear Audrey,
You said:
[You seem to be chiding me for holding my opinions. It is as though
you are saying that by virtue of the fact that I am a long time
member of M-M I should follow certain views. Am I reading you correctly?]
Unfortunately, no you are not reading me correctly. Chiding is a
subjective and hasty characterization of my critical comments on your
post. I am sure your English is good enough not to equate my critical
comments with chiding. I only used the expressions "taken aback",
"disppointing" in my critical comments. Those are not chiding by any
stretch. I was merely expressing my disappointment at your
charatcerization of "atheists" like Dawkins as fundamentalists. I was
also expressing my disappointmnet at such characterization because it
this this very mischaractreization against which MM had debated in
the past extensively with logic and pointed out the fallacy of such
mischaracterization. I did expect that logical reasoning can change
people's misperceptions if they are amenable to logic and reasoning.
I don't expect that from religious apologists, their perceptions are
rigid and unalterable by reason/logic. So seeing that you still today
make that fallacy of mischaracterization of atheist scientists as
fundamentalists despite the painstaking arguments pointing out the
fallacy of it (including my last post) I was disappointed. I could
very well have not *expressed* my disappointment. That would not
change my reasoning. Expressing disappointment is just being human :)
Also you drew the fallacious conclusion that I implied that your long
membership in MM requires you to hold "certain" views. That is an
utterly ridiculous thing for me to imply. "Long time" or "Certain
view" is not the point at all. Time by itself has no value. It is the
wisdom, experience that time brings that has value. One cannot become
wise just by vegetating with time. As a rationalist I cannot make the
ridiculous demand that one should hold "certain" views solely because
he/she has been a memeber of MM for that many years. Logic and reason
is the only relevant point to me. The main point was extensive
counter logic offered over many posts in MM (Long time implied that)
and "failure to see the fallacy of one's view" despite the
counterlogic, rather than "ceratin view". You are as much entitled to
your view that "atheists are fundamentalists just like religionists"
as much as I am enitled to refuting that view.
You said:
[scientists have no more knowledge of the origin of the universe than a
person who believes in God]
You cannot equate two persons based on what they both don't know. That
is trivial and meaningless. What is nontrivial is to compare what one
knows while the other doesn't. You probably don't understand the
difference between the observed universe and THE Universe. Knowing the
origin of THE Universe, or knowing THE origin of the Universe (i.e why
there is something rather than nothing) is beyond
science/religion/anything. Since not knowing that origin of ultimate
mystery is an obvious given, such ignorance among two persons cannot
be used to extrapolate and compare their knowledge on other subjects,
for example the origin of the observed universe.
Scientists know A LOT about the origin of the observed universe. They
have found mechanism WITHIN THE LAWS OF PHYSICS of how observed
universe can form out of a quantum vacuum. Steven Hawking is no idle
arm chair philospher. The intellectual investment he has made in
understanding the structure of the observed universe is staggering.
All you have to do is to flip through the pages of his tome "The large
scale structiure of the universe" written in 1973. You will not
understand a bit of it. But you will certainly appreciate that those
are not pages of incoherent babble written under drugs or alcohol or
dreamt up in a trance. That was in 1973. Add to that 35 years of added
reserach and and you can appreciate what he knows about the observed
universe today. Now contrast that with religious apologists. They know
zilch about the known universe. But they arrogantly claim to know
(Which even scientists do not claim to know) that the origin of THE
universe (Or THE origin of the universe) is an entity called God
and that earth was created 6000 years ago, and that all heaven and
earth was created in 6/8 days. Many of the so called religious
scholars does not even know a millionth of what Hawking knows about
observed universe yet receive far more reverence in public life.
You said:
[You said Cosmologist Barrow ends his book The Origin of the Universe
with the line "We can never know the origin of the universe." Don't
you think that is a defeatist statement and doesn't it fly in the
face of science?]
No, I emphatically don't think so. First, very significantly you
miquoted Barrow's line, by typing "the" for "THE" (If only you had
copied and pasted it) in order to make it suit your position and use
that quote against my points. I hope the misquote was unintentional.
But even with unintentional misquote it shows your misunderstanding
of Barrow's quote and thus misunderstanding of science. Barrow as a
hard scientist would not say something that flies in the face of
science. "the universe" means the observed universe. "THE universe"
(which is what Barrow said) means eveything in the universe (observed
and unobserved) PLUS the laws of physics. A very important
distinction that many science authors are remiss in not pointing
out/emphasizing.
Barrow said we can never know the origin of "THE universe". In plain
English it means we can never know why the universe exits rather than
not. Alternately we don't know what is the origin of the laws of
Physics. Science deals with the laws of physics itself, not on the
origin of the laws of Physics. Barrow meant, and what every
scientists know and any science literate person with ability to
think knows, is that the origin of the laws of Physics is an
unknowable. It is unknowable to science/religion/philosophy what have
you. Laws of physics defines the limit of human knowledge. Even you
have crosed beyond that limit when you say "Perhaps when science does
figure it all out it may be just too simple for words.". Science
cannot figure out where science came from. Science can figure out
whence/how the observed universe came about (in terms of science).
They have succeeded in this pursuit after a fashion with many holes.
It will only be final and refined when they achieve the synthesis of
all forces in nature via a Theory of Everything". But theory of
Everything will not include a theory of the laws of Physics.
"Everything", in this context means the observed universe. Thats why
Barrow said (I and you can say it too, its too simple) "we can never
know the origin of THE universe".
The sole reason for quoting Barrow's line was to drive home the point that
contrary to what you alleged about scientists, they do not claim to know
everything about THE universe. But due to your misquote you turned that
quote around against Barrow/Science/Me. But now after my clarification I hope
you understand my point (just a hope).
You said:
[Dawkins and others strike me as very dismissive of other's views. We
would do well to remember that no human is God.]
"Dismissive of other's views" is a broad and subjective
allegation/characterization Dawkins or other scientists only refute
"illogical" views of (mostly) apologists (creationists mainly in case
of Dawkins) that contradict evidence and logic. There are views that
do not contradict logic and evidence nor are not supported by logic
and evidence either. Dawkins/Scientists never pick on those neutral
views. They single out only those views that contradict logic and
evidence. Dawkins or scientists never say that "science proves that
God does not exist". They only contend that God as defined in the
traditional religions cannot exist by sheer logic. I tend to contend
that God as defined in religion does not even satisfy the rules logic.
Definition by definition has to be unambiguous, objective, so as to
admit of a logical proposition. Dawkins or Scientists never claim to
know anything beyond what they know throuh logic and evidence. And
pointing out others' views as contradicting logic and evidence does
not imply that by doing so they are claiming to know more than
what science permits them to know. I don't understand why then this
negative view against Dawkins or other scientists. Unless one is
against critizing others' views period (even if those views are wrong
by objective criteria). Thats the postmodernist perspective. That is
not healthy for growth of rationalisty and intellectual progress,
because that requires questioning and debating others' views.
Defintion of God in common parlance is fuzzy and is an open notion.
One can define God in a way that it trivially exits (e.g God is =
Love). One can define God as the origin of the laws of Physics. Such
definitions of God cannot be disproven or proven by logic or science,
nor are contradicted by logic and science. Such notions can be adopted
by scientists themselves and are not within the purview of Dawkins'
criticism. I think that it is healthy that a scientist speaks up
against pseudoscience and illogic to keep illogic in check. Many
postmodernists (maybe you are one, I am not sure) strongly advocate
not criticizing any view. To them nothing is wrong. Its just a matter
of angle/viewpoint. They would rather want scientists to stay inside
their lab and not challenge/criticize illogical views of
pseudoscientist/apologists. For many years scientists did confine
themselves to research only, thats how pseudoscience flourished and
mushroomed unchecked. Time has come for scientists to come out of
their labs and take a social role in dispelling the myths and
fallacies propagated by pseudoscientists/dogmatists/postmodernists to
protect human intellect from degenerating. Dawkins is a pioneer in
this social movement.
- Aparthib
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