Many atheists in our day have taken to ridiculing the idea of a creator God, by way of inventing some very silly (fallacious) analogies. The most popular of these is probably the so called Flying Spaghetti Monster. (FSM) We're told this being created the world. People who doubt this are told to disprove it. "Since you can't disprove it, it must be real,'' we're told.
- the idea is that god is no more real than the FSM.
I'm astounded anyone thinks this is a good argument, or a meaningful analogy. The analogy has a fatal flaw; namely that hundreds of millions of people believe in God, while not a single person believes in the FSM. How anyone can think this is a good argument against theism I have no idea.
Why do people believe in a Creator? They do so on the basis of evidence and intuition. (No one believes in the FSM on the basis of evidence and intuition.) We also need to remember that atheists believe in a Materialist worldview on the basis of intuition. You can't strictly disprove either materialism or creation.
- If materialists want to deny the value of the theist's intuition (of God), they've at the same time, denied the value of their own intuition (that there is no God).
Notes;
1. There are many reasons this is a false analogy; for instance (as others have pointed out) Christians don't believe in God because His existence can't be disproved!
- e.g. Fearing the Spaghetti Monster - by Rachel Tullock
2. It's only intellectual buffoons like Dawkins who take these silly analogies seriously. No serious philosopher that I know of does.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Design as a tool in scientific thinking
Intelligent design as a tool in scientific thinking
Evolutionists often say to creationists; 'well how then do you do science if you're a creationist? How can you use ID to do science? Give us an example. In this post I'll try to do this. (Though I admit to not being a scientist.) I'll look at the subject of dreams. The brief answer of how you use the concept of design to do science is that, put simply, you look for non-Darwinian explanations for discoveries made by researchers. I'll compare how the Darwinist storyteller looks for an explanation of some dreaming aspect - and how an ID exponent can give an alternative explanation.
- I'm always annoyed by the fact that in most 'science' done today no only Darwinian biological explanations are considered. I consider this a bad way to think, a bad way to do science. If the basic assumption is wrong, all the this stuff is fallacious, almost a complete waste of time. The insistence that only evolutionary accounts need be considered, leads to ignoring other accounts that are far more reasonable.
Let's take a look at how one might do this. I'll use a couple examples from the decidedly Darwinian book 'The mind at Night' by Andrea Block. (A book about the dreaming mind.) In it we see Darwinian speculation run amuck.
Quotes and comments
1. 'Nonetheless, dreaming's roots in that basic animal model can be seen in the worldwide human propensity to have frequent dreams of being chased or confronting other frightening situations, according to Antti Revonsuo, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Turku in Finland.' (p/72)
- Have these people never seen children at play? Children are forever running; chasing each other, and being chased. Isn't this a more likely explanation? People, and especially children, are commonly chased by dogs, or get afraid that barking dogs will chase them. Literature is full of chase scenes, and this is especially true of movies and tv. (There are the 'chases' of war; there are all the cases of parents chasing children, trying to catch them, to give them a smack, or drag them into the house; etc. We need not go begging to Darwin to explain chases.
2. 'But how could mere mental rehearsal of survival skills be effective in improving those skills if they are just imagined, not physically carried out? The answer is that the brain is fooled into believing that its motor commands in dream plots actually have been followed. For instance, when we are being chased by a tiger or a threatening stranger in a dream and our brain issues the command to run or climb a tree to safety, the unique physiological conditions that prevail during sleep paralyze our muscles, preventing us from carrying out the command, but the brain nonetheless produces the experience of movement by sending copies of those motor commands to our sensory systems. (p/72)
- Let's see now; this would mean (since it's so undeniably true) that people who are good at flying dreams would be able to fly... or at the very least, be able to fly better than people who aren't good at flying dreams, or who don't have flying dreams at all. Gee; I wonder if anyone's studied this. I wonder if I could get a grant to study it :=)
- and what of all those dreams where the person just freezes and can't run? or the dreams where people wake up before getting caught?
- gee; wouldn't it be kind of confusing to proto man's small, evolving brain to imagine he's running when he isn't running :=)
3. "Dreamed action is experientially and neurophysiologically real," says Revonsuo. (He's talking about how dreaming about escaping a tiger by climbing a tree could help 'wire' the brain in some advantageous way.)
- climbing a tree in a dream won't help you climb one in real life. Being able to climb a tree is a skill one has to learn in the real world. (Apparently our professor hasn't climbed many trees :=)
- climbing a tree takes strength and agility, and just dreaming about climbing won't increase your strength one iota.
- let's not forget that the trees in dreams aren't real trees; and if one hasn't ever climbed a tree the 'climbing' a person does in his dreams isn't anything approaching real tree climbing.
- climbing a tree in a dream wouldn't help one do anything in real life; this is nonsense.
4. 'First, consider what is notably absent from our dreams. Studies conducted by Ernest Hartmann, a dream researcher at Tufts University, have shown that in adult dreams, walking, talking to friends, and
having sex were represented in dreams about as often as in real life, but reading, writing, and arithmetic rarely if ever appear, even though the dreamers in the study typically spent six hours daily engaged in
activities that fall into the three R's category. Revonsuo suggests these parts of waking life aren't reflected in most dreams because they are cultural latecomers.' - (p/74)
- you sometimes wonder if people read what they write! Block has told us repeatedly that 'tests' are a very common dream; e.g. being in a room being tested on a subject one hasn't studied and the like. (Did she forget having written that?)
- if this theory were true there would be none of these kinds (i.e. 'literate) of dreams. (I've had lots of dreams about books; reading titles off of books, being in libraries and bookstores; reading out of books.)
- a far more reasonable explanation (with unfortunately isn't nearly as exciting as these Darwinian fables) is that reading and writing aren't activities that are dangerous or anxiety ridden. i.e. they don't produce great emotions; they aren't powerfully emotional activities; and that this is why they aren't featured often in our dreams.
5. Speculations
- I think it's best to start with the idea there different kinds of dreams, and that these dreams have different purposes.
- it might be helpful to see the 'mind at night' as fulfilling purposes similar to a computer maintenance program. (e.g. defragging, system checks, error checks, compression, back up snapshots, etc.)
- I wonder if the 'mind at night' doesn't do the work of an internal monitor; checking up not only on the brain, but on the whole body; and perhaps using dreams to report on 'problems' it finds. (e.g. I once had a dream of a tooth breaking a few weeks before it happened for real.)
- as a creationist I think it's likely that the 'dreaming mind' has suffered some damage since mankind was first created; and I wonder what a more perfect dreaming mind would be like. (Perhaps in very 'hallucinagenic' dreams we see evidence of malfunction.)
Notes;
1. The mind at night - Andrea Block
2. Unfortunately; almost all the 'analysis' in this book is based on the belief the speculations of Darwin are correct. (If evolutionary theory is false, as I'm certain it is, then all of this analysis is wrong, utterly false, and worthless. But heh, it's real science, and that's all that matters. It doesn't matter if these 'ideas' are correct, but only that they're 'scientific'.
- over and over in the book people talk as if they could know about dreams hundreds of millions of years ago. Maybe they have some fossilized dreams they can show us.)
Evolutionists often say to creationists; 'well how then do you do science if you're a creationist? How can you use ID to do science? Give us an example. In this post I'll try to do this. (Though I admit to not being a scientist.) I'll look at the subject of dreams. The brief answer of how you use the concept of design to do science is that, put simply, you look for non-Darwinian explanations for discoveries made by researchers. I'll compare how the Darwinist storyteller looks for an explanation of some dreaming aspect - and how an ID exponent can give an alternative explanation.
- I'm always annoyed by the fact that in most 'science' done today no only Darwinian biological explanations are considered. I consider this a bad way to think, a bad way to do science. If the basic assumption is wrong, all the this stuff is fallacious, almost a complete waste of time. The insistence that only evolutionary accounts need be considered, leads to ignoring other accounts that are far more reasonable.
Let's take a look at how one might do this. I'll use a couple examples from the decidedly Darwinian book 'The mind at Night' by Andrea Block. (A book about the dreaming mind.) In it we see Darwinian speculation run amuck.
Quotes and comments
1. 'Nonetheless, dreaming's roots in that basic animal model can be seen in the worldwide human propensity to have frequent dreams of being chased or confronting other frightening situations, according to Antti Revonsuo, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Turku in Finland.' (p/72)
- Have these people never seen children at play? Children are forever running; chasing each other, and being chased. Isn't this a more likely explanation? People, and especially children, are commonly chased by dogs, or get afraid that barking dogs will chase them. Literature is full of chase scenes, and this is especially true of movies and tv. (There are the 'chases' of war; there are all the cases of parents chasing children, trying to catch them, to give them a smack, or drag them into the house; etc. We need not go begging to Darwin to explain chases.
2. 'But how could mere mental rehearsal of survival skills be effective in improving those skills if they are just imagined, not physically carried out? The answer is that the brain is fooled into believing that its motor commands in dream plots actually have been followed. For instance, when we are being chased by a tiger or a threatening stranger in a dream and our brain issues the command to run or climb a tree to safety, the unique physiological conditions that prevail during sleep paralyze our muscles, preventing us from carrying out the command, but the brain nonetheless produces the experience of movement by sending copies of those motor commands to our sensory systems. (p/72)
- Let's see now; this would mean (since it's so undeniably true) that people who are good at flying dreams would be able to fly... or at the very least, be able to fly better than people who aren't good at flying dreams, or who don't have flying dreams at all. Gee; I wonder if anyone's studied this. I wonder if I could get a grant to study it :=)
- and what of all those dreams where the person just freezes and can't run? or the dreams where people wake up before getting caught?
- gee; wouldn't it be kind of confusing to proto man's small, evolving brain to imagine he's running when he isn't running :=)
3. "Dreamed action is experientially and neurophysiologically real," says Revonsuo. (He's talking about how dreaming about escaping a tiger by climbing a tree could help 'wire' the brain in some advantageous way.)
- climbing a tree in a dream won't help you climb one in real life. Being able to climb a tree is a skill one has to learn in the real world. (Apparently our professor hasn't climbed many trees :=)
- climbing a tree takes strength and agility, and just dreaming about climbing won't increase your strength one iota.
- let's not forget that the trees in dreams aren't real trees; and if one hasn't ever climbed a tree the 'climbing' a person does in his dreams isn't anything approaching real tree climbing.
- climbing a tree in a dream wouldn't help one do anything in real life; this is nonsense.
4. 'First, consider what is notably absent from our dreams. Studies conducted by Ernest Hartmann, a dream researcher at Tufts University, have shown that in adult dreams, walking, talking to friends, and
having sex were represented in dreams about as often as in real life, but reading, writing, and arithmetic rarely if ever appear, even though the dreamers in the study typically spent six hours daily engaged in
activities that fall into the three R's category. Revonsuo suggests these parts of waking life aren't reflected in most dreams because they are cultural latecomers.' - (p/74)
- you sometimes wonder if people read what they write! Block has told us repeatedly that 'tests' are a very common dream; e.g. being in a room being tested on a subject one hasn't studied and the like. (Did she forget having written that?)
- if this theory were true there would be none of these kinds (i.e. 'literate) of dreams. (I've had lots of dreams about books; reading titles off of books, being in libraries and bookstores; reading out of books.)
- a far more reasonable explanation (with unfortunately isn't nearly as exciting as these Darwinian fables) is that reading and writing aren't activities that are dangerous or anxiety ridden. i.e. they don't produce great emotions; they aren't powerfully emotional activities; and that this is why they aren't featured often in our dreams.
5. Speculations
- I think it's best to start with the idea there different kinds of dreams, and that these dreams have different purposes.
- it might be helpful to see the 'mind at night' as fulfilling purposes similar to a computer maintenance program. (e.g. defragging, system checks, error checks, compression, back up snapshots, etc.)
- I wonder if the 'mind at night' doesn't do the work of an internal monitor; checking up not only on the brain, but on the whole body; and perhaps using dreams to report on 'problems' it finds. (e.g. I once had a dream of a tooth breaking a few weeks before it happened for real.)
- as a creationist I think it's likely that the 'dreaming mind' has suffered some damage since mankind was first created; and I wonder what a more perfect dreaming mind would be like. (Perhaps in very 'hallucinagenic' dreams we see evidence of malfunction.)
Notes;
1. The mind at night - Andrea Block
2. Unfortunately; almost all the 'analysis' in this book is based on the belief the speculations of Darwin are correct. (If evolutionary theory is false, as I'm certain it is, then all of this analysis is wrong, utterly false, and worthless. But heh, it's real science, and that's all that matters. It doesn't matter if these 'ideas' are correct, but only that they're 'scientific'.
- over and over in the book people talk as if they could know about dreams hundreds of millions of years ago. Maybe they have some fossilized dreams they can show us.)
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