Re: Dennett / Ruse Tiff Continues


Chimp wrote:
catshark wrote:
On "Chimp" <pan_paniscus1859@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
catshark wrote:
"Chimp" <pan_paniscus1859@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


[...]

And just how do you reliably detect a pattern of design
without knowing the intent of the design and the attributes
of the designer?

In the usual way, by comparing differing hypotheses
for their explanatory success and predictive power.

No, that suffers from the very defect that we pummel the IDeologists with.
You can't test a hypothesis of a divine designer empirically, precisely
because nothing is beyond the ability of such a being. No result is
incompatable with that hypothesis.

If no result is incompatible with the "divine designer" then
it has no predictive power. I thus would reject it in favor
of any hypothesis that did have predictive power.

Demanding "predictive power" of religion is scientism.

Now this is a good reason why the God hypothesis can't be
scientific . . . but that's what I am arguing . . . it *can't* be scientific

I disagree. It is perfectly possible to formulate testable
hypotheses and predictions based on a "God". Here is one:
"If I read this Bible verse over this sick child then this sick
child will recover, and if he dies I will accept that my
prediction is falsified".

That is reducing God to a force of nature that can be reliably
manipulated.


The fact that believers do not usually do this (preferring
to end ". . . and if he doesn't, I'll invent some feeble excuse
for why my prediction isn't falsified") does not mean that the
above cannot be done.

Either the "God hypothesis" cannot make falsifiable predictions,
in which case we reject it in favor of theories with predicitive
power; or, if the "God hypothesis" _can_ make falsifiable
predictions then we simply test it like any other theory.

That is enough. It is clear that you advocate scientism. It doesn't
make you a bad person but it is a very restricted philosophy, IMHO.
Beating the ground where the dead horse once peed isn't going to change
that.

[...]

You are then assuming that anything a human can't
observe is unreal.

For the EIGHTH time it is a _definition_ not an assumption.

Just because you call it a definition does not mean it is true and you
have given no reason to accept your personal defintion, except that it
is your preference for how the universe should work. In my book, that
counts as an assumption.

--
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible
that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

- Rene Descartes -

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