As to your comparison with the failed attempts to derive ethics without dependence on unfounded, dogmatic assertions, that’s a very, very different enterprise than the demonstration of evolution with huge amounts of physical data and confirmed predictions based in theories derived from the analysis of those data. And in the assertion of ethics, you run straight into the problem that any “ought” statement is outside of science and logic. There is no logical or scientific reason that you could give as to why the human species should continue for another week. At least none I’ve ever seen. However, since I’d very much like our kind to continue, I’d really love for science to get about its proper business of trying to save life on this, our only planet, and stop handing the reactionaries the political fuel to gain power and through what they consider their enlightened self-interest to destroy us all.

Thursday is my heaviest teaching day of the week, I doubt I’ll get to Hume before tomorrow.

I have the humility to admit that. Do you have the humility to admit that you can’t know anything about god? Because they are two sides of the same coin. The reason science can’t dispose of god (or promote god either) is because humans cannot know anything about god. Once you admit the possibility for knowledge of god, you open up the door for either disposing of god or proving god.

“I have looked at a number of attempts to do ethics without reliance on dogmatic holdings and have never seen one that was successful at doing so”

Perhaps this is the improper venue to discuss such philosophical work. However, your statement is in fact structurally no different than a YEC who says: “I have looked at a number of attempts to demonstrate evolution and have never seen one that was successful at doing so”

Out of curiosity, what are your objections to Hume?

You brought up the issue of a creator God, even if you didn’t use that word it’s what you meant. All I was pointing out is that there are foundational issues of material existence that are not only beyond current science, someone could be forgiven for suspecting that in order to go beyond the origin of the universe or down to to the actual foundation of material existence (if there is any) what we know as science today would probably have to change drastically. It’s possible that Eddington was right and that there are aspects of the material universe, “laws” of the universe that are incomprehensible to us and, therefore, will never be known to us. If that is true about the material universe it’s not impossible that what we call God is equally inaccessible to us but still very much there. Science can’t dispose of God, it’s not going to happen according to the new atheist plan because they make claims for their ability to do that with science isn’t matched by the capabilities of science, not without distorting those.

This point, the one Eddington made about the impossibility of human beings to process aspects of the material universe that are beyond our logical-scientistic capacity will always make the idea of a supernatural beyond those. Logical positivist style denials of the possibility on the basis of it being “irrational” is silly. That the supernatural would be outside of the abilities of procedures we developed to deal with the natural universe would be about as surprising as the inability of our ears to see color.

I have looked at a number of attempts to do ethics without reliance on dogmatic holdings and have never seen one that was successful at doing so, even if those who tried it can be rather ingenious in their trying to hide that fact. The fact is any statement of ethics is outside of what can be shown empirically or logically, they have to be founded in one or more foudational dogmas. That wasn’t changed by the dishonest attempts to deny that was exactly what was happening. Even the idea that reason is preferable to unreason is to assert something that is not objectively founded.

Since the community effort consists of and depends on the individual experience of each of the people within the community there is nothing trivial about it. In fact, the peer review process and the eventual changing of consensus in the communal phenomenon of science is very much dependent on individuals having a different experience, often in the form of coming to a different conclusion, very often on the basis of having experienced something novel to the common experience of the group.

It’s not to minimize the communal aspect of science, I held that science, itself, is the result of communal agreement, but neither can you minimize the individual, personal aspect of experience in the matter. The communal agreement perhaps is at its least personal when it comes to agreed to methods and standards but that agreement is entered into by individuals on the basis of their own knowledge and volition. What makes one person capable of producing science and another only able to produce hoaxes of the kind recently in the news here? One of the most annoying aspects of the “news” coverage of the balloon boy infamy was that people kept talking about the “scientific” interest of the father, some of the worst referred to him as a “scientist”. It would seem he has some aspirations to science, if of the cable TV variety, but the educational experience and willingness to abide by the requirements of science are clearly not there. It’s a question of both personal experience and personal choices.

As in that quote from Wm. James at 112, you can choose the thinner instead of the thicker method of consideration. You might get neater results from the latter but not without a heightened possibility of leaving something crucial out. I’ve noted here before how many of the new atheists either are in the profession of the behavioral sciences or are great fans of them. I’ve come to the conclusion that isn’t to be marveled at, the social sciences are among the worst practitioners of exclusion for purposes of convenience. If they’re willing to do that with observable behavior in order to draw conclusions within human and animal experience it’s no wonder that they reject huge parts of what individuals conclude on the basis of their individual experience of life.

More later, perhaps.

As the shared information has to come from a personal experience, I don’t think you can devalue it to that extent. It doesn’t work within science until it is shared and evaluated (as a result of others personal experience) but the experience itself is the raw material of science.

Wednesday is one of my busiest work days so I will answer more of this later.

And you persist in discussing all kindsa ideas that are beyond current understanding. O.K. What’s your point? I’m happy to say “I don’t know…yet.” Some things I’ll never know, some things humanity won’t know until well after I’m dead, and some knowledge I’ve actually contributed myself. I really don’t see the point of showcasing ignorance as if such ignorance proves anything.

And finally, I didn’t mention “supernatural” because that’s just plain silly, definitionally. Why on earth would I ever try to assert that methodological naturalism has anything to say about something that isn’t natural? I did say “superhuman”, which is far from implying supernatural. Frankly, I find the term “supernatural” to be a rather useless term when used in this type of debate (though it is fruitful in more colloquial contexts). It is fodder for silly semantic word games and serves no real purpose for either side other than to distract.

Finally, I remind you that just because certain types of moral behavior are defined in your worldview through something you consider dogma doesn’t mean that other people don’t find it necessary to do that way. There are plenty of philosophers who have made serious attempts at arriving at a system of ethics without recourse to dogma, some with more success than others. Hume is a great example. If you get to your moral system through willfully accepting dogma, fine, but that doesn’t mean that I do too. As an imperfect person, I’m certain to have hidden dogmas and I can tell you that I have many examined ones that are works in progress. But don’t presume to tell me that because I have been imperfect in abandoning mine that I should accept or tolerate those willfully maintained dogmas of others.

Again, as my analogy above illustrates, I find the PROCESS to be quite important. A willingness to challenge dogmas is perhaps as important as success in overturning them. A great many people refuse to even question certain topics, and I hope my words will decrease that number, however slightly.

God isn’t a person, not an animal of any kind. Even what we could dimly imagine as “super human intelligence” would be an all too human attempt to try to comprehend what God might be, how God might think. The inadequacy of that attempt was appreciated in the early days of Abrahamic monotheism in the well known declaration by God that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. I would also point out that it was also appreciated in non-theistic Buddhism through equally clear but less forthrightly stated comments about the Dharma.

You might be accurate about the concepts of God held rather superficially by people who don’t think about it very often or very deeply, though even a lot of them report experiences that are quite a bit more profound than what they might describe more casually.

The assertions of new atheism in this area aren’t serious, they’re cartoon renderings to be ridiculed and mocked.

What was before the big bang? If that theory of the origin of the universe holds, which I’m no where near as confident of as I was only a year ago. Was it material existence? Was it anything that science will ever be able to touch? From what did the universe, including us, come? Is thinking about that incompatible with science? In what way is it incompatible with science, does it impede science? I strongly suspect you would think it wouldn’t.

How about what do the lowest level subatomic entities that we know of now consist of? What about the forces that they seem to obey, at least to the extent that some of our cleverest people are able to tease out their existence? Are scientists who go beyond what science can find out to construct elaborate theories about that, and the math bugs who abet them, guilty of scientific incompatibility? Do they impede science? I haven’t read “Not Even Wrong” yet but I hope to get to it someday.

” In fact, I asserted the contrary. For just two examples anti-theistic atheists and Stalin. So you’re arguing points I didn’t make. ” JJE

Which is why I chose the wall of separation and political equality to point out that dogmas can be quite unscientific, and in the case of ethnic and gender equality, those ideas have been and are under direct attack by people with careers in science as we discuss this. I fully hold both that the virtue of the wall of separation and the right to political (and more controversially economic) equality are as fully founded in human experience as evolution is in biology or any theory of chemistry or physics, I have no hesitation to admit that both are dogmas founded in the authoritative assertions of history and the result of personal experience and, in my case of religion.

What is the way in which holding dogmatic beliefs so seriously incompatible with science that it is necessary to campaign against those dogmas? I pointed out that the foundational dogmas of the new atheism about the nature and virtue of science are dogmas and at times in direct conflict with what science actually is.

The idea of a creator God isn’t an idea that can be contained within science because science can only deal with those aspects of the physical universe it is equipped to process. But the idea that science is able to deal with questions of the supernatural, outside of what it can process, is a foundational aspect of the new atheism. You can’t try to do with science things that they want to do with science without promoting a lot of stuff as science which is clearly no more science than “intelligent design”. Yet the new atheists hold themselves up as the defenders of science as they are allowed to distort it for their own, quite extra-scientific, and dogmatic purposes.

I am going to have to consider your scenario and might get back to it if there is something that seems apropos comes to me.

As to science being something that doesn’t rely on personal experience, I have to say that is exactly the kind of unreflective thinking that the new atheism seems to be built on. Science IS the result of HUMAN observation. Human beings don’t observe collectively, they observe individually. They might then publish the results of their observation and another person or group of people might then replicate the conditions the noted in the report of the original observation but what they observe will be just as much of an individual experience as the original experience. In fact, their reading of the original report was ALSO A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. If they observed something other than what was reported by the first individual, that would also be personal experience and would lead to a conflict of the kind that modern science is built to provoke.

How did people come up with the methods of science except through the individual experiences that led them to believe those were effective in both discovering how things work and how to more effectively manipulate the external universe. Logic is the product of our experience and of our personal knowledge of what works. Mathematics is the extension of logic but the logic itself is the result of personal experience. In people who lack the ability to have those kinds of experience or who choose to ignore that experience or to avoid it, logic is quite absent.

If it didn’t there wouldn’t be so much as a single scientist in existence. Not a single person, of the kind that come together to comprise any kind of community knows the first thing about the universe without experience of it. Where would “science” come from if no one who practiced it contributed the results of their experience?