Dear Sir: From my perspective, regarding your account of Dawkins, he appears to apply logical deductive argument (nearly compulsively) in his discussion and contrasts. I might add two points to this:
1) As religion does not necessarily claim that it arrives deductively from mathematical logic- in fact, addresses only those facits of things that are basically lingual and story-like in nature for which the laws of logic have, at the outset, no hand. Thus his arguments are all of a scientific nature only and not compatable with religious questioning. Science can approach these topics only when it has at hand/direct witness, also, the story-events involved-which cannot be gained from deduction.
2) I also do not not dismiss Dawkins intellect in this matter, as his discussions are interesting with unusual interpretations. However his topics/titles to his discourses are not correctly sorted with regards to story and history/observation, and deductive reasoning. It is, I believe in all these like arguments, only a matter of nomenclature that is in dispute. Of our basic characterisitics, inherited or acquired, there is not much variation or real incentive and question to arguement. For those who like to play with words, e.g. a quantum Santa Clause, that can be everywhere, the ancient Greeks also argued that the gods (in order to be defined as a god) could have no temporal or positional inconsistencies-would have reduced it to the level of ordinary, also appears only to be a test of meaning, as this does not include a witnessable commodity yet is the source of the pursuit of the laws of nature leading to the modern intellectual challanges involving science and theology. Also, your portrayal of Dawkins seems over sarcastic in your word usage of "boasting", as it appears he only accepted some personal gratification in the awakening(verses argumentation with) of a child to simple reasoning.
In this regard modern science pursuits consistently(always) refer to (a)"commonality" in scientific test , when actually, the origin, meaning and application, is social, lingual(god-a commonality that is everywhere-men with a common story as a species). In saying that there is no Santa Clause or that he(Dawkins) cannot grasp mankinds' adherence to religion(verses science?)he might as well have meant also that there is no quantum mechanics either, if the origin of quantum theory is based on the same word and application -"commonality" in its' searches,- as contemporary science also has this same lingual meaning of faith(light of the same velocity from anywhere-i.e a reference point that is anywhere/everywhere). What can be discerned from these topics, issues and questioning, beginning wih the words "generation gap", including the novel Roots, the migration and change in black culture, scientific challange to biblical meaning, the great technicalizations that almost replace the mind and hand,the great infiltrations of the old world by the new -as all of the same issue- is an active rejection of inheritance altogether. ( Witness the great increases and resourcefulness of the new immune diseases ). As these "acts of rejection " are all of willfull intent, it might be argued that in all these (scientific) endeavors and discussions we have missed the point, not only failed to identify the nature of the problem, but have exactly assumed an integrated role, redefined a new, existing of-itself commonality of an endeavor to divorce our roots(a terrible fastly metastising endeavor, akin to having a parentless, immaculately conceived unicell as a self imposed, applying(tyrant), intelli-mental weather forcaster.

http://www.marvinekirsh.com
http://www.authorsden.com/marvinelikirsh

I read Henry Gee's newsblog with great interest and found much that I agree with. Regretably Dawkins left much of his beloved science behind a long time ago. Dawkins sets himself up, along with others, as arbiters of scientific truth, without recourse to the use of the scientific method. For example Dawkins dismisses the existence of ESP because it is impossible, when he should be investigating such claims or relying on the investigations of other scientists, in this and many other instances Dawkins "knows" he is correct without recourse to such things as results and facts. Dawkins is not attempting to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God he is merely stating his belief and as religion is a belief system Dawkins is as much a religious person as those he acusses of unreasoning behaviour.
Gordon Rutter

Sir,

Henry may as well have simply said "in my personal opinion, religion is above science" and left it at that, thus saving us all the few minutes it took to read his ramblings.

How thankful can we be that his level of close-mindedness and blind faith in, well, faith itself, is uncommon in today's scientific community.

Henry: good luck in your quest for a future Templeton Prize.

Well, to be honest you are not really the book's target, the faithfull will be willfully ignorant until the heat death of the universe :-). Also I would not recommend you read any satire, and especially not Douglas, usually the religious get really angry at that quote because it is so viciously clever. Faith after all is an all too human delusion, what Douglas is saying is that god is a total fiction invented by humans and the concept won't exist otherwise.

I'm making my way through Dawkins' latest tome (I’m posting my reflections on a purpose-created blog: http://thegoddelusion.oxfordblogs.org). I haven’t yet finished, so here are a few early thoughts

Gee asserts that science and belief are two different things. With such staunch premise, Dawkins stands no chance of persuasion or impact.

However, I’d like to take Dawkins on with his own tools; his so-called logical reasoning. Dawkins maintains that such can show the non-existence of God. Putting faith and belief aside, on the grounds of logic and reason alone, I cannot accept this

As a Christian, I accept that God is truth. Dawkins would, I think, accept that science uses reason to search for truth; I would surmise that Dawkins is searching for God

Dawkins’ interpretation of the logical ramifications of established theories (viz: quantum mechanics), or less established ideas (but by no means logically implausible, such as multiverse) are not based on any established truth.

For example, does Dawkins assume that the passage of time is external to one’s own consciousness? Does he suppose that the universe exists externally to one’s own consciousness? (Etc. etc.) These are basic examples of questions that our minds struggle with. Without answers, Dawkin’s atheism defines a belief system such as might be found in the mind of any cult believer. His beliefs seem to make science, and the world, a colder place; but this is not truth

To Dan P -- well, if I am not the book's target, who is? Creationists will never be convinced -- and has Laurence Krauss says in his review of Dawkins' book in this week's Nature, Dawkins does a disservice to all those scientists who also profess some faith, who are much more conversant with religion than he is, and have actually thought these things through. So all he is doing is preaching to the converted, like you, who will of course gloss over the logical problems in the book, as well as its poverty of argument -- and be incensed in a somewhat religiose way, if anyone dares criticize your idols, such as 'Douglas'.

And as for satire? To continue my argument above, I venture that you, not I, have had a sense-of-humour bypass. I enjoy Douglas Adams as much as anyone, even though I think it as facile as the jejune ranting that Dawkins goes in for these days.

You, boy, need some churchin' up. I recommend you visit one of my websites, the King Herod Appreciation Society (http://www.kingherod.org.uk), the only religiously affiliated organization that is proud to view Monty Python's Life of Brian as a documentary.

If you can't stand people criticizing your faith, you must ask yourself how strong that faith really is. And that goes for atheists, too.

To Tony Gillett -- yes, it is my personal opinion, and I have the right to hold it. Unlike Dawkins and other religious fundamentalists, I see no reason to bash anyone over the head with it. Dawkins, as a scientist, should understand that science cannot and should not seek to establish absolutes -- and so should you. Failure to understand this is a failure to understand the very basis of the scientific method. Given that you spent only a 'few minutes' to read my 'ramblings', it is clear that you are as close-minded as those you despise.

To Tony Gillett again. The Templeton Prize? Ah, me. Here I agree with Dawkins, but for different reasons. In trying to square science and religion, the Templeton Prize makes the same categorical error that Dawkins does. Would be nice to have the money, though ... :)

To Henry Gee:

Who are you to tell me who I despise? And what I should and should not do? Quite ludicrous and wholly unnecessary.

Oh, and if you're going to presume to quote Douglas Adams, please do so in context. You no doubt remember that in the HHG, several sentences later God promptly vanishes in a puff of logic (although admittedly, most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys").

Science Theory is (True or False) Belief

With regards to Henry Gee's Proof That Santa Exists, I wish to comment on what I perceive to be a lack of definition with respect to the macro.
This comment, regardless of if it is read later, or simultaneously, by many or one readers, or all within simultaneous hearing distance of one another, represents multiple two party communications - like a light beam that goes in many directions to reflect off surfaces that are each different.

In essence my comment is at many macro places at the same time, but does not bear a constant with respect to the micro(e.g. names of readers) or with respect to the lineages of readers and communications. Likewise, the possibility of Santa Claus, who is many things to many people, is not automatically excluded.

Is this statement scientific or religious? It addresses scientific validity, though, so it is a communication of a commonality about the properties of all things-of a spiritual nature for reflection and re-reflection.

We have constructed a mental obstruction in saying that anything at all is not soley a matter of communications in-sets- of-twos verses (stable/security-giving ideas of scientific mathematics, theories and constants. Santa Claus exists for any that know of it. A scientific change exists for all, regardless. Then isn't the theory that could cause the unexpected-unpredicted change, a mistake of belief-it science theory reduced to belief, wherein, my writing, religious beliefs, the existence of Santa Clause on solid ground.

If knowledge of a Santa Claus arises from the family-school(lives/parentage/life situations of the children involved) the logic of the impossibility of a macro visiting Santa Clause everywhere does not really go any further in point.

These relations of the tangible to the ethereal its is always the fact of delivery and reception of our communications exchanges, ideas, -things not made of steel, nuts and bolts, or the macro observable-as the glue of things and beyond test for their existence.

http://www.marvinekirsh.com
http://www.authorsden.com/marvinelikirsh

... and several sentences later still, Man in an attack of hubris proves that black is white and gets run over on the next zebra crossing. QED.

Henry

What I take issue with in your piece is the concentration on God rather than the actions of God. I can see the idea that God as a concept needs no scientific backup, but God as a player in the universe puts herself squarely in the scientific bailliwick. If God does stuff, that doing must be scientifically explicable. The energy in and out must match, the Second Law must not be broken, and so on and so on. In short, for me it is to the idea of supernatural activity, not of God, that a scientific critique can and should be aimed.

What I object to is your assertion that religion is one of the things that makes us human. This is perilously close to saying that because I am not religious I am, marginally or moreso, less human as a result. I admit that most humans now living and in the past have been in some sense religious. But most humans have also suffered from tooth decay, and I don't see that as intrinsic to the human condition.

Faith-based assertions about god are OK -- faith-based assertions about what is and isn't human are more troubling.

Oliver -- you raise two excellent points.

The first concerns the actions of God rather than his existence. I do not think the two are separate, as the existence of God, if scientifically falsifiable (which it isn't), might only be revealed by action, if only in a somewhat passive sense (e.g. detection of some form of radiation). However, as I have made clear, there are good reasons for thinking that the existence of God cannot be addressed scientifically, and that holds true for his actions, too.

In the days of my Bronze-age forebears, who knew no better, God was forever manifesting himself in burning bushes, pillars of salt etc. We make a new God for every age, of course. There is no way of knowing whether the Universe works in the way it does because of Divine action or not. Occam's razor suggests the latter, and that's the legitimate, scientific point to adopt -- but who cares? Science has no bailiwick in belief. The scientific detection of God is philosophically meaningless, as I pointed out in the article.

By the way, why 'her'? Discussing the gender of God is in my view meaningless, so I prefer to say 'him' as I like good old-fashioned grammatical usage before it was poisoned by political correctness, which I loathe in all its forms, and your word usage seems to reflect nothing more than cheap PC-based assertion. Get over it.

Your second point -- about humanity. All human societies ever investigated appear to subscribe to some sort of belief in the supernatural. It seems to be a part of the human toolkit. I shall not debate here whether this has selective value. I don't think one is less human for denying this. However, I think Dawkins makes the mistake of suggesting that religious belief is in any way pathological or 'wrong'. It's just the way we are, our natural state, and unless Dawkins is a robot, or subscribes to some old-fashioned notion of progressive historicity (and we all know where *that* leads), that's the way it shall always be.

I've always considered myself to have a rational point of view - not accepting things unless they seem to make sense and were backed up by evidence and that kind of thing. I didn't even believe in Santa.

Having read this article, now I'm not so sure.

Previously I had no "Faith", but now I think it's about time I got one.

Can someone please recommend one? Which one is best? Are there any that I should avoid because they are obviously rubbish?

... and several sentences later still, Man in an attack of hubris proves that black is white and gets run over on the next zebra crossing. QED.

hubris. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved October 27, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hubris
hu·bris (hy br FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=" -)
n.
Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance: “There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris” (McGeorge Bundy).

I am not certain to who or what your reply refers. My statement, it's intended meaning, exactly reflects this definition(above from dictionary) and example quote,... the over-application, lack of understanding of solids, angles, and figures, mechanical contrivances with respect to human life.
A zebra-of black and white, or white and black; one color(black) is the absence of reflection,the other(white) almost complete reflection verses complete adsorption. To appear black does not require even a test or witness-black does not imply even an impinging light source to reflect color-it is the absence of color. Then what is the difference between a zebra of white and black, or black and white, or one that is in many places and gives an illusion of a zebra at one place and can be all black or all white or nothing at all-e.g..not a zebra;blackis white and white is black and... what does cross at the next crossing, but proof of the statement-and no reference to hubris. Or there is still a zerbra at(or past) the crossing, ignorant of the proof and testing an already suffering man,history, with poorly reflected on-incomplete judgement.

Henry,

I laughed out loud in your raising the point of God’s gender, and of the absurd distortions enforced upon the English language by political correctness. Roll on winter festivities (ugh)!

I consider the anthropomorphization of God to be both untrue to my own Christian faith, and downright unhelpful in any argument about God’s existence. Simply put, I believe that God exists outside of both matter and time. He’s no flying spaghetti monster, no matter how big, sparkling or powerful. God is not he, she, or it. God is not is any manner measurable or weighable; I believe that God is not detectable by any scientific apparatus, nor can be perceived by our five senses, nor by midi-chorians, for that matter!

On a more personal level, my Christian faith provides a link to such an intangible God, in my belief that God is made personable, and much more, through Jesus Christ.

Jim.

I disagree with the general thrust of Henry’s piece, for a number of reasons (I’ve written a proper, longer reply on my blog at http://psom.blogspot.com/2006/10/delusions-of-faith-as-science-henry.html)

Firstly, I think empirical facts are relevant to believing in whether a God exists, just as they are in believing in electrons, global warming and evolution. Religious beliefs don’t assume a special supra-factual status just because religious believers say their beliefs are immune to being challenged by the facts of the world – it is this sort of defence that an atheist would take issue with!

Second, and perhaps more importantly, if someone holds a set of beliefs and says to you, “This is what I believe, and it’s not up for rational or empirical scrutiny and criticism, and the facts of the world are not relevant to me in holding these beliefs”, then you simply cannot have a rational conversation with that person about those beliefs. If I disagree with the beliefs, how would the conversation go? Let’s say the first belief is something like the existence of the soul and I raise the extremely thorny issue of soul-body interactions (or the mind-body problem in more common philosophical parlance). My opponent could just reply, “I can’t offer any plausible account of how soul and body interact – I just have a faith-based belief that they do, and any logical or empirical arguments against this belief are, as far as I’m concentred, irrelevant to my belief. I’m sticking to my guns whatever you say”. If you claim that your belief in your God is based on faith and is not to be subject to empirical and rational scrutiny, then it’s impossible to have a conversation about that belief. No wonder inter-faith dialogue is so tricky!

In the world we live in today, such faith-based certainty is surely a dangerous thing, even though faith — which often amounts to not just believing something in the absence of evidence for the belief, but believing in things in the face of contradictory evidence (what better test of the strength of your faith to believe the palpably untrue!) — is somehow touted as an epistemic virtue.

Dave D wrote: "I've always considered myself to have a rational point of view - not accepting things unless they seem to make sense and were backed up by evidence and that kind of thing." Good for you!

However, Richard Dawkins makes the same point at the end of his book, noting that through science, we can now experience more of the Universe than is immediately available through the narrow eye-slit of the visual spectrum (in a section he challengingly calls 'The Mother Of All Burkas' -- oh dear).

Dawkins also notes that human beings are, as one would expect, evolved to experience (and make sense of) a rather narrow version of reality. But what he fails to address, except in the most hand-waving way, is what must follow from that argument, namely that there might exist things in the real world which cannot be comprehended by the human mind, and perhaps never will, even with our augmented instrumental armoury.

That is, there may be things that are 'real' but which will never 'make sense'.

What might these things be? No idea! I'm as human as anyone else.

Now, this is emphatically not an argument for the existence of God, let alone Santa or the Tooth Fairy. But it should be a warning to those who think that anything in the real world must, simply by virtue of that fact, be tractable in terms of hypothesis testing.

Dawkins persistently fails to understand this, as his personal burka obscures such ideas as quantum mechanics and philosophical advances such as Godelian undecidability.

Ooops, I added an extra bracket to the URL, so it doesn't work - try this: http://psom.blogspot.com/2006/10/delusions-of-faith-as-science-henry.html

To Dan Jones -- I've read your post and the longer one on your own blog. I must say that you completely miss the point.

The point was precisely this -- that the investigation of God cannot be the same as the empirical investigation of electrons and so on -- for reasons of logic, rather than faith. To assume it can is to make the same category error made by Dawkins.

Your next assumption is in fact rather insulting and demonstrates that atheism is in itself a somewhat intolerant doctrine, based on -- if I may say so -- a wilful ignorance of what faith is and what it entails, reducing the whole thing to a caricature that does not resemble what faith actually is.

Of course one can never have a rational conversation with any religious fundamentalist about their beliefs, if your agenda is to deny them as valid as a point of principle, and simply to shout them down.

It's very easy to criticize American-style evangelism (say) with its concrete ideas of heaven and hell.

However, faith more broadly construed than that rather more subtle. Many Jews, for example, would have a very vague idea of such concepts as the afterlife or the soul, on the grounds that such things, if they exist, are fundamentally unknowable, as nobody has come back from the dead to tell us what such things are like, if they exist. In sum, faith -- like science, properly executed -- demands a rather more humble approach to the totality of creation than is typical of the Dawkinsian atheist, who says as a matter of fiat that in science once should in principle be capable of discovering the absolute truth about everything. So I would turn your assertion around -- it is impossible to have a rational discussion about faith with an atheist, because of the fundamentalist stance that atheists inevitably adopt.

Hi, Henry. Thanks very much for your response to my post!

Unfortunately I'm not really qualified to comment on the relevance to physics of self-referential conundra like Godelian undecidability, or whether or not it's possible to make "sense" of quantum phenomena from a classical perspective.

I think I see your point though: that we should always bear in mind that we may never be able to understand everything, maybe even in principle. OK, fine, but how do we know when to stop trying? And if, as you say, it isn't an argument for the existence of God, then wouldn't it be better to keep gods and faiths out of the discussion? Isn't that largely Dawkins' point: whatever's going on, there's no evidence that it's got anything to do with gods?

To Dave D -- thanks for your response. As scientists, we should never stop trying to discover all we can. However, as religious people, we should simply accept the existence of God without any need for further investigation. There is no reason why these things are antithetical, as I made clear in my article. Dawkins' mistake is to assume that science and faith compete for space on the same intellectual battlefield (the creationists make the same mistake, but from the opposite direction).

So, yes, I agree with you that it's best to keep Gods and Faith out of the discussion. But it's people like Dawkins who keep dragging them back in. So Dawkins is right too -- if there is no evidence that the existence of God has no bearing on anything we see in the rational world, we should just admit the fact. Great! So why doesn't Dawkins just accept that and move on?

What is he so frightened of?

If it is the current alarming march of relligious fundamentalism, then that march will never be stopped by his brand of hysterical confrontation.

Dawkins intends The God Delusion as a kind of 'Gude To The Perplexed' (a Judaic theological allusion which Dawkins would undoubtedly miss) to encourage atheists, and wannabe-atheists, to come out of the closet.

However, the tone of the book is so relentlessly confrontational, so wilfully ignorant, and so underestimates the adversary (religious people aren't the dimwits that Dawkins supposes) that one wonders whether Dawkins, in his heart, knows that he is fighting a losing battle. As Isaac Asimov once wrote (in the voice of one of his characters), violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. And what kind of a rallying call to atheism is that?

I’ll reply to Henry’s response to my post shortly. In the meantime I wanted to pick on something else. Henry writes in response to another entry:

“As scientists, we should never stop trying to discover all we can. However, as religious people, we should simply accept the existence of God without any need for further investigation. There is no reason why these things are antithetical, as I made clear in my article. Dawkins' mistake is to assume that science and faith compete for space on the same intellectual battlefield (the creationists make the same mistake, but from the opposite direction).”

So is this argument valid or persuasive: as mediums we should simply accept the existence of poltergeists without any need for further investigation? More generally, why is “As X people, we should simply accept the existence of X without any need for further investigation” invalid for nearly everything you might care to believe in, but suddenly valid when the X’s are replaced with ‘religious’ and ‘God’, respectively? If this question misses the point, why? What is it about these beliefs that means they can be held without any scrutiny? For sure, they might be obscure and difficult concepts - so are many things, but that’s not a prima facie reason for believing in them. And presumably the God you believe in has certain characteristics and capabilities and not others, so how do you decide what to accept about God and what to reject? Did God create the universe? Does God respond to personal prayer? Does God underwrite moral law? If so, what does God deem moral and immoral? I’m sure these will be written off as infantile and misguided questions – more evidence that I’m missing the point – but they are totally fair questions in this debate. You say you believe something exists – I’m asking “What is this thing, if you can put it into words at all, and why do you believe in it?”, just as I might in response to you telling me that you believed that Thor or dragons exist (I can’t categorically disprove either of those either). If in science it is not OK to say “As X people, we should simply accept the existence of X without any need for further investigation” then surely that way of thinking about the world is antithetical to saying “As religious people, we should simply accept the existence of God without any need for further investigation.” So my question remains: why do you claim that they are not in conflict?

To Dan Jones -- Not only do you miss the point, but you are digging yourself more deeply into the hole you have made for yourself.

The point is that science is one thing, belief is quite another. Sure, try to investigate the existence of God scientifically, if you like. Perhaps the Templeton Foundation will give you a large grant. You won't find anything, because the premise behind the investigation is wrong: *precisely* as wrong as speculating on the number of angels you can fit on a pinhead, and for the same reason.

That reason is -- and I do not think I can be any clearer -- that questions of belief are unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable.

Therefore, it is pointless to speculate, or even ask, on the characteristics that God might have. If people want to believe in the Great Spaghetti Monster, that's OK with me.

I say this, because we are expected to say such things in a tolerant society. As for me -- well, as I said in the last paragraph of my article, had you done me the courtesy of reading that far, that I do not care to speculate on the nature of the intrinsically unknowable. Scientists would do well to adopt the same criteria and not assume, in their arrogance, that they somehow have the capability to know absolutely anything.

But I detect another strain in your comment, and in Dawkins' book -- that of intolerance. Dawkins simply cannot stand the idea that he shares the planet with people whose ideas, to him, are irrational, and he wishes they would go away, and even advocates schemes whereby religion might be extinguished. Well, Dan, there are a lot of people in this world whose views I regard as intolerant, batty, and even dangerous, but it is a consequence of an enlightened democracy that people should be entitled to hold these views. Sadly, atheists are no more tolerant than religious fundamentalists (which is why Dawkins' allusions to burkas are all the more ironic -- because the joke is on him).

If you don't believe in God, kindly stop telling God what to do.

Dan's post brings to mind another question. I'm curious as to how one acquires 'faith' in the first instance. The answer varies dramatically from person to person of course - but assuming the question is not too personal, Henry, where did your faith in the existence of a God originate from?

To Tony Gillett: your question reminds me of that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian in which an onlooker asks Brian's mother if she was a virgin, "if it's not a personal question".

For me I don't think faith was very far away. I was always suspicious of people like Dawkins who seemed to have all the answers down pat, when (I suspected) *real* scientists shouldn't behave so arrogantly.

However, I guess I only admitted to having faith over a period of months when my in-laws died within weeks of one another, while my wife was pregnant with our first child. Makes you think, that does.

Of course, I'm Jewish, so the [insert fundamentalist-sect-du-jour here] would fry me whether I believed in God on not.

FAITH v SCIENCE

"Our time bomb is mysticism, its delivery system is language. And its hiding place? The unfathomable coils of our DNA." I wrote those words almost a decade ago (The Spirit in the Gene, Cornell University Press, 1999) simply because the process of Darwinian evolution demanded it. I did not then understand what form that mysticism would take and how it would infect the world. It is now obvious.

“Adaptive specialisation in any species is a two edged sword. Disproportionately productive in their birth environment, specialisations become lethal handicaps when conditions change. A peacock’s tail is the standard illustration for this crucial evolutionary principle. The peacock-tail of our species is our predisposition to mysticise--to assign peculiar, even supra-natural, significance to people, events, places and things that matter most to us. As the late Carl Sagan wrote: ‘We’re significance junkies’.

The explanation for our addiction is simple enough. Unfettered as it is by inconvenient facts, religious faith depends entirely on mystery and ‘miracles’, and this generates intense fervour and builds powerful bonds between believers. Indeed, the familial and tribal bonds forged by our ancestors’ tribal faiths were so strong and so altruistic that they more than made up for our species’ lack of physical assets--such as strength and speed, fur, claws and fighting teeth. It was this talent for tribal mysticism and altruistic cooperation that catapulted our kind from the brink of extinction to global domination. And since mysticism was our evolutionary Excalibur, our genes now determine that ‘spirituality’ and ‘faith’ characterise every aspect of our behaviour: we have become obligate mysticisers and all cultures are ‘god-based’. It’s what worked for two million years

But with 6.5 billion people presently struggling to survive in habitats that once supported no more than 4–5 million hunter-gatherers, our trusty Excalibur has finally revealed its second evolutionary role: it will provide the lethal blade that will disable cultural cooperation when the oil runs out and Gaian evolution rolls out its big guns--global warming, global pandemics, and widespread starvation” (HYDROGEN: Life's Maker and Breaker. http://www.regmorrison.id.au ).

So let’s stop kidding ourselves with vacuous philosophical and ‘moral’ argument. Like all semi-universal behaviour, our tendency to have 'faith' in gods, witchcraft, political dogma, etc, is clearly genetic and incurable.

Hi Henry. Again, I enjoyed your reply, and can't resist another post...

I am pleased to say that I agree with you that science and faith do not compete compete for space on the same intellectual battlefield. This is because faith, characterised by "simply [accepting] the existence of God without any need for further investigation." has no intellectual content.

According to my dictionary, "intellectual" is the adjectival form of "intellect" which is defined as the "power of thinking and reasoning". "Simple acceptance" hardly requires much thinking or reasoning, does it?

Henry and co,

Isn't there is at least one scientific principle that applies here: parsimony? Not Dawkins' common argument about how it is economical to believe in the simpler set consisting of just 'universe' rather than one consisting of 'universe+god'. Rather, the one that says there is plenty of evidence that the feelings and inclinations and intuitions and experience of brushing against the majestically immanent that Henry says are intrinsically unknowable - those religious experiences could be explained as subjective events that offered reproductive advantages of some kind during the course of human cognitive evolution. You can believe in a set that consists of 'belief in god is an evolved and subjectively real phenomenon' without having to believe in a set that includes all that and an actual, real god on top of it. That's economical. That's keeping the entities unmultiplied.

I guess I'm saying that the meaning of your religious experiences is outside science, but the fact of their existence isn't. And I'm also saying that your personal religious experience says exactly zero about the existence or otherwise of any god, in the same way that science says exactly zero about it.

Well, it seems so to me anyway.

Henry's comments are in italics; mine follow below.

To Dan Jones -- Not only do you miss the point, but you are digging yourself more deeply into the hole you have made for yourself.

I think the hole you see me digging myself into is more imagined than real. Or perhaps I’m disappearing from view because you’re digging.

The point is that science is one thing, belief is quite another. Sure, try to investigate the existence of God scientifically, if you like. Perhaps the Templeton Foundation will give you a large grant. You won't find anything, because the premise behind the investigation is wrong: *precisely* as wrong as speculating on the number of angels you can fit on a pinhead, and for the same reason.

I’m not concerned with investigating God’s existence, nor that of pixies or the Great Spaghetti Monster. And I don’t want to speculate how many angels you can fit on a pinhead – I wouldn’t be talking about angels at all unless someone who believed in them brought them up.
As for the distinction between science and beliefs, I agree that they are different – I made this explicit in my blog post. But as I said, that doesn’t mean that they are unrelated. Many of the conclusions of modern science are held as beliefs: I believe that chromosomes are made of DNA wrapped around proteins, all of which is made up of atoms such as carbon, oxygen and so on. The scientific evidence for this is the reason that I hold these beliefs. Can we agree that this is a reasonable thing to say?

Other beliefs are not based on science – the belief, say, that homeopathy works over and above the placebo effect, which some people hold – and others could not be based on science: perhaps you believe that Vermeer was a better painter than Rembrandt or whatever. So of course belief is not science.

That reason is -- and I do not think I can be any clearer -- that questions of belief are unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable.

I understand the words, and what they mean when put together – I just disagree with the point. I can’t be any clearer than that. And I think you could be a lot clearer. What does the phrase “questions of belief” mean? The beliefs we hold – and they are many and varied – are based on many different things for many different people: hunches, authority (deferring to those ‘in the know’), solid evidence, faith and so on. We can ask all sorts of question about beliefs, or of beliefs – what foundation do they have, are they true, are they useful and so on. I have beliefs about DNA and the sun and atoms, but questions about these are not “unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable”.

So I don’t think ‘belief’ is being used in the sense above, because it is simply untrue that questions about our beliefs in general are unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable. “Questions of beliefs” seems to refer, in Henry’s usage, to religious beliefs, a subset of all beliefs, which I agree are unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable – but this is precisely the problem with them. If this is the case, why claim to know anything about things in this domain? Or if not ‘know’, why claim to have beliefs about such unknowable things?

So I agree that it is pointless to speculate about how many angels you can fit on a pinhead, because the answer is unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable, and so I don’t; and I go one further — I don’t speculate or believe that there are any angels on the pinhead at all. So why speculate or believe in a similarly unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable God? Henry suggests that the fundamental reason why such speculation (about angels, not God’s existence) is wrongheaded is that science and belief are different things. I agree. But beliefs can be based on scientific knowledge, just as they can on faith. Not all beliefs are about things that are unknowable. The religious subset of beliefs are, however. That is why they require faith to be believed. But I agree with the point that we should not speculate about – or, as I would say, profess to believe in – things that are unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable, such as God’s existence.

I think what is true and perhaps what Henry should have written is “The point is that science is one thing, FAITH is quite another … That reason is -- and I do not think I can be any clearer -- that questions of FAITH are unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable.” I whole-heartedly agree with this. But this is just an articulation of the starting point of the debate – that beliefs based on science are very different from beliefs based on faith – and not an argument that beliefs based on faith are rationally defensible in the way that scientific beliefs are (I know the point is not to rationally defend articles of faith, but surely that’s a concession to my argument that you can’t have a rational discussion about someone’s faith-based beliefs because they’re not supposed to be subject to rational scrutiny!).

Therefore, it is pointless to speculate, or even ask, on the characteristics that God might have. If people want to believe in the Great Spaghetti Monster, that's OK with me.

I too defend the right of people to believe and say what they like. It’s fine that other people believe that smoking doesn’t cause cancer, that global warming isn’t happening, the Great Spaghetti Monster exists, God exists, whatever. That doesn’t mean I can’t then questions these beliefs and the assumptions on which they rest. Doing so is not some sort of pathological intolerance. In any case, are you suggesting that we treat your belief in God as we might someone’s belief in the Great Spaghetti Monster, and that you treat your own belief in the same way? I’m happy to go along with that.

I say this, because we are expected to say such things in a tolerant society. As for me -- well, as I said in the last paragraph of my article, had you done me the courtesy of reading that far, that I do not care to speculate on the nature of the intrinsically unknowable. Scientists would do well to adopt the same criteria and not assume, in their arrogance, that they somehow have the capability to know absolutely anything.

That’s not fair, I did read the whole article. Just because I’m not accepting the points you make doesn’t mean I didn’t read them. I’ve tried to deal, on my blog and in my comments, with what I see as difficult issues for the notion of faith-based belief, and frankly none of the specific points that I’ve raised or the questions I’ve asked have been addressed. You wonder whether I made it to the end of your article, but I wonder whether you’ve thought about a single thing I’ve written. In my first blog response I made the point, which I’ve re-iterated above, about the relation of science to belief, and rather than replying to that you’ve simply re-stated your original point: “The point is that science is one thing, belief is quite another… That reason is -- and I do not think I can be any clearer -- that questions of belief are unknowable, untestable and unfalsifiable.” I’m taking issue with these claims, and saying them again does not constitute an argument in their favour.

But I detect another strain in your comment, and in Dawkins' book -- that of intolerance. Dawkins simply cannot stand the idea that he shares the planet with people whose ideas, to him, are irrational, and he wishes they would go away, and even advocates schemes whereby religion might be extinguished. Well, Dan, there are a lot of people in this world whose views I regard as intolerant, batty, and even dangerous, but it is a consequence of an enlightened democracy that people should be entitled to hold these views. Sadly, atheists are no more tolerant than religious fundamentalists (which is why Dawkins' allusions to burkas are all the more ironic -- because the joke is on him).

This is getting close to an ad hominem attack, and I reject the slur of intolerance. I disagree with you, and you with me, but why does that make me intolerant? I might be vigorously arguing with you, but I wouldn’t want you to agree with me out of compulsion, or be forced to think something other than what you do. I said it above and I say it again: like Voltaire, I defend the right of people to believe and say what they like, even if I think it is untrue or wicked (and yes these are two different things for me). In any case, I can’t see how not believing in something, and arguing my position, is intrinsically more intolerant than your defence of your position, and think the characterization of religious moderates as beacons of tolerance in a sea of dogmatic, intolerant religious fundamentalists and atheists is manifestly absurd.

If you don't believe in God, kindly stop telling God what to do.

I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not telling anyone what to do, anymore than I’m being told what to do. I sense this argument will go round and round in circles, so I’ll opt out of this debate for now.

To Dave D: you wrote: 'According to my dictionary, "intellectual" is the adjectival form of "intellect" which is defined as the "power of thinking and reasoning". "Simple acceptance" hardly requires much thinking or reasoning, does it?' You're right, and that's my point.

In The God Delusion. Dawkins notes repeatedly that religious faith, and belief in God, does not stand up to any kind of intellectual scrutiny, and to that extent he's right. In my view, attempts by religious people over the ages to square this circle are as wrong-headed as Dawkins' own attempt to frame what he calls 'The God Hypothesis'.

To Zac Hanley: you wrote: 'I guess I'm saying that the meaning of your religious experiences is outside science, but the fact of their existence isn't. And I'm also saying that your personal religious experience says exactly zero about the existence or otherwise of any god, in the same way that science says exactly zero about it.' Exactly. I can sum this up with an old joke about two Jews who are having a passionate discussion about the existence of God. In mid-sentence, one looks at his watch and says "irrespective of the existence of God, it's time for prayers". There is another story, which may or may not be apocryphal, of Jews in a concentration camp who put God on trial, find him guilty -- and then break for prayers.

What I am saying is that I choose to believe in God, whether or not he exists. The belief is more important than the fact.

This brings me to Dan Jones' long reply which is really about what we mean by 'belief'. I touched on this in the article. In my view, belief in phenomena which can be investigated by experiment, and belief in those which cannot be so tested, are entirely different things.

Dan writes: 'I believe that chromosomes are made of DNA wrapped around proteins, all of which is made up of atoms such as carbon, oxygen and so on. The scientific evidence for this is the reason that I hold these beliefs. Can we agree that this is a reasonable thing to say?' Yes, but all these things Dan mentions -- about chromosomes and so on -- can be investigated, and Dan's beliefs will change accordingly if scientific investigation discovers otherwise.

Dan also raises a large number of instances that fall into a grey area -- beliefs which can be tested empirically and found wanting, but which people still cling to, no matter what. His examples include homeopathy, and the view that smoking doesn't cause cancer, and so on. I might add belief in the literal truth of the Bible, which is easily demolished by study of the text itself, let alone the scientific findings about evolution, the age of the Earth and so on.

I agree, Dan, that's fair enough, and I am glad you raised the question.

To clarify, perhaps I should have said 'faith' rather than 'belief' (but had I done so I suspect we'd be having the same argument).

One of the reasons I used 'belief' is that Dawkins uses it such a lot -- and so do creationists when they attack 'belief' in evolution which is 'only a theory'. Creationists exploit the misplaced Dawkinsian assumption that scientific falisifiability and religious faith occupy the same mental space, such that one must necessarily replace the other.

In my view, scientists, especially evolutionary biologists, use terms such as 'belief' far too casually, when statements about evolution (such as ancestor-descendant relationships) can be buttressed by more sophisticated theoretical tools than many evolutionary biologists -- and most lay people -- think are available. I discuss this issue in my book 'In Search of Deep Time'.

On intolerance: I'm afraid that one cannot deflect this as a slur or an unwarranted accusation, particularly after having read The God Delusion, in which Dawkins demands that people of religious faith in particular are denied any special respect for their views, with the corrollary (and this is the part I find offensive) that atheists, and particularly scientists, are accorded such respect because of their own initial axiom that their view is 'better' than anyone elses'. This really is no more tolerant than the views of a jihadist. I raise this again -- people of faith are, in the main, content to have faith, without which their lives are not complete, and to do so remains a private mater, or a matter to be shared among like-minded individuals, and to be free to do so without persecution. Dawkins' book, especially in its strident tone, asserts that atheists must speak up for themselves -- which is fine -- but also to damn anyone elses' views simply as a consequence of their own beliefs.

In sum. I am happy with my faith, and I am happy being a scientist. I don't see why one should interfere with the other. It's Dawkins -- not me -- who keeps banging on about religion, and in a voice that speaks to me of religious intolerance and persecution.

Dan has decided to opt out of the debate. How sad. And how like Dawkins, who thunders from his pulpit while refusing to engage with the opposition. He should worry about the company he keeps, then: I have just stumbled across this atheist in-group thread (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.atheism/browse_thread/thread/200335d7e4219c6c/20198340b3135b48?hl=en) which consists entirely of personal insults draped round the very misconceptions I have sought to explode. Face it -- atheism is no more a religious faith than any other, a vicious, proselytising sect that claims the higher moral ground under the guise of science. How very like ID creationism. Hmmm ...

Spot on Dan. Henry can't seem to cope with rational argument.

After all I have written, Bruno's comment --"Henry can't seem to cope with rational argument" -- says it all.

Atheists seem as hopeless as creationists when it comes to reasoned argument.

From what I have seen this week from my excursus into the blogosphere, atheists are intolerant, shallow, ignorant, prejudiced, fundamentalist and narrow-minded.

Atheists claim the moral high ground of rationality as their own and use this as a weapon to proselytize everyone else, whether they want it or not -- just as bad as the Jehovah's Witnesses who hammer on my door with the Good News that their faith is better than mine, simply because they say it is.

I make no apology for my strong language -- Dawkins uses this, and worse, in his book.

I'd go further. Atheists are also hypocritical and cowardly: when challenged, Dawkins, for one, bleats that he is not seeking confrontation, that he has been misunderstood, the poor lamb, and refuses to engage others in debate at all.

I read The God Delusion expecting it to be full of holes, and it was. What I didn't expect was just how bad a book it is. This is a shame, and a terrible missed opportunity. A book written with a more measured tone, and far better researched, would have been a chance to make a contribution to atheist thought of truly lasting value.

If Dawkins' view is typical of that adopted by atheists in general, his book (hailed, after all, as an atheists' Bible) convinces me that atheism stands for, at best, a desperate rearguard action that uses aggression to clothe what is a fundamental poverty of intellect; at worst, a kind of sub-autistic pathology that denies the depth and reality of those emotions, feelings and urges that make the experience of being human simultaneously so difficult and yet so rewarding. I rest my case.

I’m not sure the discussion so far qualifies as a debate. Henry has expressed the opinion that science and religion are two wholly unrelated matters, which is an opinion he is perfectly entitled to. He has however taken the further step of expressing this opinion as fact – further more one which, by his claim, is irrefutable by its very nature.

Again, all this is his opinion, and that’s fine. I’m reassured that Henry’s treatment of his role at an immensely important scientific journal such as Nature is unlikely to be biased by his religious views, given that he draws such a sharp distinction between the realms of science and of the mystical. Thank God for small mercies, one might say.

All the best to you Henry.

PS, I’m not sure what value there was in your generalisation and vitriol packed attack on atheism in your most recent post. But then, you can say what you like (especially when it’s your blog).

[Hello - Nicola Jones here, editor of Nature's online news. Please do note this isn't Henry's blog - it's the blog of news@nature.com, of which I'm editor and moderator. Thanks.]

three things:

firstly, regarding God's gender which was debated near the top of the thread, the Bible says Adam was created in God's image. Therefore one assumes God has a willy and is therefore a "he".

secondly, to people who are religious and say dawkins etc cant prove there is no God, and there are some things we just cant know etc, this is fair enough, technically you are right. but...where is the evidence that God does exist? what i am getting at is why do seemingly rational people who embrace science, start believing in God in the first place?

thirdly, i have read somewhere here that virtually all cultures of people are religious in some way and believe in their gods. someone said this shows that religious beliefs is part of being human. if it could somehow be demonstrated that chimps also had religious beliefs, what would the implications of this be?

It was said at the top of the blog, you might well have just written "God exists because I believe in it".

Sam Harris sums the view up, "We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad', 'psychotic' or 'delusional'... Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are."

Atheists are just rational and believe in what there is evidence for Henry.

I just wanted to intuitively reflect(if you'll excuse the pun), that the world is nothing but a process-procession from past to present of things rebounding and reflecting light from one event to the next: cause and reaction, reaction and reaction. Sense of some events can be found if they are regular (in path) short enough in period that a series of causes and reactions can be discerned, postulated and tested theoretically. However we can never know the exact beginning-origin, only intermediate points(from which we define a start) in the chain of events, for the applications of our science. Any state of affairs can have more than one plausible history, is most likely restricted to at least two -as rebound and reflection have two components (emitter and reflector), one can not know the exact past, it is cast upon his perception and breath , the real path to any time is unique: in the void, dark area's of this reasoning , we are always left with all wrong answers if we are seeking any absolutes(knowlegde) unless our correct assumptions are stated/ included, which I think are always arguable in terms of a hypothesis and antithesis-at least two other alternate routes(if the real route is unknowable). Belief beyond test, then, derived of intuition, cannot be included with the categories of thesis and antithesis-it has to do with a correct but unknowable path. A valid religious belief is beyond test regardless of what ever revelations can or do occur. Science then always has only an abbreviated view and assumption(of regularity, period, duration etc), in fact anything observed has an unknowable history/path. We all know this as common sense, but a very great meticulousness has evolved in our thinking and especially applied mathematics. I think this is related to a disease like disturbance involving this issue that is so in grained that we are not levelly aware of, or forgot in nature of where we started, of the roots-beginning of this questioning, which are not unknowable, they are inherent with curiosity of the world and a partly known history of the ideas reflected to us from the past(though never completely knowable/understandable as none of us were actually present in the communications of the past. Thus though have a commonality with the present-assumed life long duration. If not unknowable, this then is a topic of science-The mass of an electron or its' path which includes many assumptions in derived theory, leaving the subject still in a vast darkness without the assumptions clearly known and stated to lend a correct name and classification to the theory, is a lesser category.
In discussion of religion and science, a good scientist does not make judgement, take sides in an issue. he learns, studys the fact of the existence of. Here again the matter is reduce a matter of nomenclature, title and topic of communications, not whether a god exists or not. In essence the discussion ,though understandable in the weaving and reflection, tossing of thoughts around on a topic to its' resolution, healthy, is still a little lower than standard and mature behavior, reflected as if in threat of succumbing to the studied conflict itself. It(the topic) has an illness of some kind-of action and reaction, that we should find a GREATER PEACE in searching this out.
For example, in this weeks issue of Nature an article about a very old virus found common to the human species-fragments embedded throughout the genome(I personally think the problem is of something swallowed of bacterial size or larger.)
I might be accused of trying to change the topic, am not attempting to suppress it, but believe that the real issue is an unencompassed medical pathology and that we need to sort all of our science evidences and activities in this direction so that we do not exceed its real limits, become causers rather than curers.
I firmly believe that any part of the world presented to us by nature, automatically (by virtue of the progression of past to present)includes, within our reaches, a satiating resolution, regardless of the unknowable, as they reduce to a supeflousness-secondary or as unimportant in nature for instance, in example, to the period of traffic light that on one day might be paramount to ones particular travels, and on the next irrelevant. I think that revelations to this nature of things for our physical, and mental health, guidance, are of the highest, number uno, priority for our education and intellectual pursuits, that we reflect on and better define and name our problems,mental activities, and endeavors.

http://www.marvinekirsh.com
http://www.authorsden.com/marvinelikirsh

All the delusion as are actually illusions.

Dawkins is rather adept at stirring the pot. He takes the most extreme position on Evolution, religion etc and savagely bashes his opponents over the head with it, complete with the most inflammatory language and imagery available to a rational person. This is of course intentional and im sure he was a vociferous attention seeker even as a small child.
The fact of the matter is that Dawkins is just the latest in a long line of Bulldogs who 'believes' that all things can be explained by the current models and formulae of science, and that everything that does not fit is an illusion.
Radiation was undetectable once and its existence was a matter of belief. The existence of Bacteria as the causative agents of disease was also once outside the realms of accepted science. Just beacause the science of the day lacks the tools and ideas to test a hypothesis or detect a phenomenon does not prove that phenomenon to be illusory.
All the evidence is not yet in, and science is still only in its infancy. Personally i am an Atheist, but in accordance with higher scientific priciples i accept the possibility that i might be wrong, and there may in fact exist a supernatural realm, currently undetectable with our simplistic tools of scientific inquiry. As scientists we should be developping these tools and furthering our research rather than wasting our time digging trenches for our 'beliefs'.
Dawkins is basically an Evangelist for the Athiest/ultra Darwinian belief system, and should be treated as such, with a heavy dose of salt.

I BELONG TO COUNTRY INDIA ,KNOWN WELL AS A LAND OF RELIGION ,MONKS AND SAGES . I HAVE READ DEBATED LETTERS OF HENNRY GEE, DAVE D,DANE JONES MARVIN KRISH AND OTHERS .SO INTERESTING THEY ARE! is god a faith or more than that? is it a delusion or hold some external facts?
TO ATHEIST , I WANT TO SAY WHAT CAN YOU DO IF OUR MIND IS SET TO HOLD BELIEFS ABOUT GOD? WE SEEK A FATHERLY BODY ABOVE US AS WE HAVE TESTED AFFECTION OF OUR PARENTS IN CHILDHOOD!HUMANITY REQUIRES RELIGIOUS TUOCH, WHAT CAN YOU DO MR DAWKINS?WE CAN BECOME CRUEL AND INDIFFERENT WITHOUT GOD!I AM TALKING ABOUT COMMON SOCIAL REACTION. SO IT IS NOT LIKE THAT SOME DAWKINS WILL SAY WE WILL LEAVE RELIGION.
FORGETING MASS REACTION IF WE THINK STRICTLY ABOUT SCIENCE , CONFUSIONS WE SEE. YOU KNOW cosmological constants ARE FAVOURING LIFE AND WE ARE THINKING ABOUT A MULTIVERSE! WE DONT SEE A HAND BUT WE HAVE SEEN A WATCH!
I SHALL BE OBLIGED IF I CAN SHARE MY MIND WITH INTELLECTUAL PEOPLES LIKE YOU. MY email: DDC777@REDIFFMAIL.COM

To all sides:
When my daughter was a toddler and asked me "does God exist?", I answered that it is purely a matter of faith. She went on "can you prove one or the othyer?" I explained that any proof is based on premisses which themselves require proof, which require premisses, and so on. In the end, there is always a beginning which is adopted without proof. They may be declared evident "by thmselves" (axioma). Therefore, the proof of any "truth" depends on those axioma which you choose (or are inspired) to believe. For a discussion to be valid, there must first be an agreement on those axioma (premisses). The "truth" that will be "proven" is implicit in those premisses. Because the premisses of science and of theism are inconsistent with each other, each will prove a different truth. A discussion under such conditions cannot be conclusive: the 2 (or more) sides are not discussing with each other, but at each other, sometimes killing the other. Each side has its own faith: the theist has faith in (a) God, and the scientist has faith in science: philosophically, there is no difference. A real incident may illustrate the point. A young school drop out and drug user (and seller) found God. Ben was saying: "God chose me and loves me over all others, and inspires me so that I know things without the effort of study." He worked as a technician in a lab. He asked what results I expected from an experiment he was carrying out. I told him, but he disagreed, predicted a different outcome and that the resuts will prove him right, as he is inspired by God "because God loves me over everyone else." The results agreed with my prdiction. Ben became very depressed. I asked if I could help (I thought explaining the experiment complexity of
electrochemical/viscous flow dynamics). He said: "No, there is nothing you can do: God loves you more than he loves me"

To all sides:
To prove a “truth” we must start with premises. To prove the “truth” of those premises we must dig deeper into more fundamental premises, and so on. The bottom line is we must start with the most fundamental premises, which we declare “truth evident by itself” (axiom). For any meaningful discussion, we must first agree on those premises. The proven truth is already implicit in those premises. Because the premises of science and of theism are inconsistent with each other, their respective truths also are incompatible with each other. In the last analysis, it remains a matter of faith: the theists believe in God and the scientists believe in … science. Philosophically (and only philosophically), they have equal standing. This is illustrated in a true-life incident: a high-school dropout (call him Ben), drug-addict and juvenile-delinquent found God and became a model citizen. Ben liked to say: “Jesus loves me above everyone else and chose to save me. He inspires me with wisdom and knowledge.” He worked as a technician in a lab. Once he asked me my expectations about the results of an experiment we were conducting. He disagreed with me and predicted a different outcome. He turned out wrong and became extremely depressed. I offered to help. I thought explaining the complexity of an electrochemical/viscous flow system. He declined: “There is nothing you can do. I thought Jesus loved me best and I find out he loves you more.”

THE PERVERSE LOGIC OF POSTSCIENTISM

Jacques Leibovitz wrote:

"To prove a “truth” we must start with premises. To prove the “truth” of those premises we must dig deeper into more fundamental premises, and so on. The bottom line is we must start with the most fundamental premises, which we declare “truth evident by itself” (axiom)."

Consider the logical conversion of the premise A into the important conclusion B: in 1865 Clausius converted the premise "Any irreversible process can be closed by a reversible process to become a cycle" into the conclusion "THE ENTROPY ALWAYS INCREASES". In the era of Postscientism a strict rule says:

Whether the premise A is true or false is immaterial, even if the falsehood is obvious. Unless a more profitable theory is offered the current theory involving the inference A->B should be praised and obeyed.

So the premise "Any irreversible process can be closed by a reversible process to become a cycle" is obviously false but the rule is so strict that, after 140 years of scrutiny, references to the falsehood amount to a single hint:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/ p.39:

"A more important objection, it seems to me, is that Clausius bases his conclusion that the entropy increases in a nicht umkehrbar [irreversible] process on the assumption that such a process can be closed by an umkehrbar [reversible] process to become a cycle. This is essential for the definition of the entropy difference between the initial and final states. But the assumption is far from obvious for a system more complex than an ideal gas, or for states far from equilibrium, or for processes other than the simple exchange of heat and work. Thus, the generalisation to ‘all transformations occurring in Nature’ is somewhat rash."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

WHY DEATH OF SCIENCE IS IRREVERSIBLE

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/ p.4:

"Even deliberate attempts at careful formulation of the Second Law sometimes end up in a paradox. One sometimes finds a formulation which admits that thermodynamics aims only at the description of systems in equilibrium states, and that, strictly speaking, a system does not always have an entropy during a process. The Second Law, in this view, refers to processes of an isolated system that begin and end in equilibrium states and says that the entropy of the final state is never less than that of the initial state (Sklar 1974, p. 381). The problem is here that, by definition, states of equilibrium remain unchanged in the course of time, unless the system is acted upon. Thus, an increase of entropy occurs only if the system is disturbed, i.e. when it is not isolated."

Einstein offered much more efficient conundrums, e.g. equivalent to "I measure your clock to be slower than mine and you measure mine to be slower than yours but if you go and return you will find mine to be faster than yours". The secret of such conundrums is that any attempt at disentagling them intensifies the destruction of human rationality. Intelligent students abandon science, less intelligent students discover the equation

science = learning by rote

However conundrums develop (the progress of science cannot be stopped) and in the end even learning by rote becomes too difficult. At that very moment the University and College Union (UCU) declares "potentially irreversible decline of UK science that could soon see parts of the UK unable to provide courses in both science and maths":

http://www.politics.co.uk/press-releases/education/higher-education/higher-education/ucu-report-reveals-that-latest-physics-closure-part-decline-in-uk-science-$458709.htm

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

To: Pentcho

I have my notions of the laws of physics, I am a biologist. I cannot discuss them here though they are relevant to your topic "Death of Science". I arrived at a PhD with the same oppressions you describe for the intelligent student though I mainly never came to direct intellectual challenge or rejection of what was taught. I, with out questions regarding failures and successes, one might have, simple meandered my way to the degree I sought-with my main thoughts of what isn't pleasing those who judged me. The more aggressive who could take issue with what ever I was not aware of, but did notice sometimes that compulsively rote students with less understanding had a good or better success than I did . were pleasing in a way I was not , and could never be successful at , I naturally stumbled here to there without any awareness of the real politics of these situations.
Looking back I say that a total trouble with all this, having these extra problems a lot of unfairness, I find that it is a general phenomenon of thinking with respect to the whole worlds functioning, a general academic phenomenon that has a deep seed and reduces to the topic of immunology, and loss of touch with roots. parental rejection, challenge of religion with science(I am not especially pious of religious though). A factor present in any aspect of modern society I can extract from the world)news computer etc.) presented to me. Over active descriptive wording. When an intelligence agnt invades a forewign country nature normally doesn’t like it enough that he has to create a disturbance in language that leaves continual scar. I could discuss this in terms of redefined general processes to include physics. The existence of a symptom overactivity, is basically a good sign that all is not lost-but has its dangers when it ( overactivity as really an expression of helplessness –attention drawing, but can be dangereously abortive, acts in unison with its’ causes.
The roots of this problem involve a confusion of what was initially desired from (or science if you like) the intellectual pursauits of civilization.. Personal revelation is always the answer and not the means for the construction of tools-with which mankind is obsessed. We have the tools but not the revelation: We hardly refer to an ultimate purpose if there exists a tace of it in our teaching or living environments
I could not have found these insights without perseverance with my education-my state of knowledge of the topics them selves would not have evolved. If revelation is the pill, and we do have it, we must find a temporary peace not to indulge lingually with language evolved from a world of transmitters and receivers that is much broader and generalized in natural vocabulary...in a world of absolute uniques by definition(i.e. "the unique" instead of the world" -"diverse-est unique = longest lived" i.e many fold combinations of description and translation for the same unique(character, perception, etc)-that total diverity is willfully but unknowingly reduced. The excess baggage in modern science theory derives from repeated, retranslated,. hidden universal commonality in all of its aspects –an enormous extra baggage –causing-caused by- spiraling loss of diversity- metastasizing rapidly to suppress the more questioning and intelligent- is an acceleration of natural decline-the old are always less immunologically competent. Some persons can become directly allergic to science(especially with its' broad acceptance), where all can be allergic and not know so, that without personal revelation as any goal, not stated, a worshiping of inherited roots, knowing of the starting points, a society might march together to the tune of its’ own decline. If science technology as an easier life, poorly contested and established principle in its teaching, is spreading out of hand, it SHOULD be reduced by common sense (and for the preservation of); but the abandonment of science would also deprive us of the same, sacredly sought, personal revelations.

Marvin,

The problems of science I am trying to call the attention to are in fact problems of the LOGIC of science. Deduction has proved extremely difficult to control and for 150 years scientists have been worshipping a few among them who, by abusing the deductive process, managed to obtain miracles. Let me describe the Beginning:

Heat never flows spontaneously from cold to hot. In Clausius' 1850 language this statement would take the form:

X: It is impossible, without any expenditure of force or any other change, to transfer heat from a cold to a hot body.

X is a true statement and therefore its negation, not-X, is false:

Not-X: It is possible, without any expenditure of force or any other change, to transfer heat from a cold to a hot body.

If not-X is a corollary of the statement Y, then Y is false and not-Y is true. So in 1850 Clausius deduced a version of the second law of thermodynamics:

Not-Y: Reversible heat engines working between the same two temperatures have the same efficiency. (Y: Reversible heat engines working between the same two temperatures have different efficiencies.)

The problem was (and still is) that not-X is NOT a corollary of Y. Clausius did not deduce anything. He just laid the foundations of the huge edifice of irrationality that crushed science but proved extremely profitable for the builders.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

Pentcho: This descriptive logic involves a very confusing issue that leads also to the theory of relativity, where the truth(actual fallacy) is much more deceptive due to the complexity and very abstract nature of the problem. One can almost envision the terrible leverage the former could have on the other in the ways people invent to think. I do not know the actual resolution to save science-society, but to cause change people need to be educated to a subtle fact, to break bad habits in the absence of available scientific authentication or information: Altruistic behavior can be of appearance only and be exactly self serving and visa versa or a combination of the above. In example I was only trying to get weight A off of my foot-and also saved the town, but I am not an altruistic hero as described. All science starts with specific problems that turn in to tools and ways which can be forgotten-each situation is unique and may not apply to the next-in general ideas specifics are forgotten and never reexamined. A persons own specific situations(unique situation) can turn out to be ubiquitously not applicable- or a ubiquitously accepted applicability turn out to be ubiquitously not applicable- both the reverse of self serving and to service the community. This occurs from the way we advertise and look/see(how I look-appear) (how you appear) ,how I see it to be . How I see is by reflection and emission)-true, from top to bottom for both science and social factors., A bad direction can exist of-itself-ignorance of what is up or down, forwards or back, DARK OR LIGHT. When man defines and applies his definitions of mother nature he becomes a bully-either a hard or soft sell salesman. A key fact of detection is of the existence of the sale and salesman itself and the appeal to something we all have in common-we are all a little bullying for room/space-volume-as are all the species-though unable to contrive. Any contrivance is a dead ringer to the existence of a salesman who is unique with respect to yourself, in a chain to the first invention. There is no third party to certify or judge.-and we should not inflict/punish in any manner in a way that affects sustenance to those who refuse the crowd less we negate the doctrines of freedom we have established. Even a dictator does not punish with this criteria on mind, though it can appear so. Einstein, though certainly unsatisfied, unfinished and unresolved in his inquiries, yet with the observation of the bending of light by masses, the measurement of its' velocity, demonstration of the vast energy in matter, is so conceptually hard to challenge it is approached as if a completed notion. Contradiction to it is as difficult and twisted as appears common sense to the prediction of aging and change on traveling the velocity of light-the theory of relativity itself, I believe as it stands , is as empirically invalid(totally conceptual) as is this theoretical example itself("if it were possible to travel at velocities near the speed of light?")-does a perfect circle or the number pi exist in reality). It no has no place in common application. A vast misunderstanding comes-is delivered to us by the same salesman. Comically I believe it is missing in a factor of the relative-"not relative enough" that if understood would send (social)masses looking for stability-absent or of unarrived at pillars that can not be added second after the sale. In essence the masses, the common man MUST learn to bend light-as if it were to have a mass. The thought of applying a force is then much simpler...
Failure is so infiltrated into society that the crooked fingerer with a physically crooked/bent finger and a good but physically bent finger are seen as the same especially if they point the same, in the object(common mass-force)-tangible (people with mass and weight) experienced reality of the world.
A grand mistake in common social thought is in the belief of the existence of other than that of personal judgement existing. I believe that good personal judgements of however many numbers average both for the self and for society.
This entire senario paints a gloomy picture that could be difficult to straighten out(if you excuse the pun) and with the consequence we wind up slangy straight(stiff).
I have been collecting a series of these important key words(e.g reflection, witness, vaccum, void, mass, straight, bent, in the past, passed, diversity, combinations)and reflecting on language usage’s (I speak only English) I know of . Hot and cold might be good ones as they are very relative with respect to interpretation and or actual meaning. i.e off the trail-hot or cold-the heats on-a hot date. These slang usages have been given meanings sometimes, that the real root is lost in obscurity or on its' way there, transitions that we are plainly not aware of it in conscious activity.
Things we know/discover today(i.e cold dark matter, imprinting in biology, the bending of light in a gravitational field, nanomaterials) are only part of an incomplete picture (from the incomplete picture we have constructed), which might assume any form; yet we are very unwisely applying these observations at a very fast pace and without an absolute demand.
A key factor in biological theory is diversity-I believe to be the key element of all. In physics, a mass is not thought to be diverse (especially a uniform mass),is given a single unique name for many elements composing it that may not be identical -a social mass is assumed to have diversity. When science practices on nature, the scientific concept seems to get transmitted with the technology to threaten diversity It is always though the uniqueness and diversity of the individual that builds society, that today comes incorporated with a coercive diversity repressing/decaying element. The individual must rule society, not the other. Comparative efficiencies of steam engines do not depend on the motive force used to drive the engine, but on the engine. The worst kind of engine I can conceive of would be one with a regulated efficiency dependant on power available-the engine itself could not make choices for the best routes to take to keep running. For such an engine design to have grown to be a way of engineering and education sales –be a very bumpy ride-high efficiency-a low key ride - when the “heats off” , squandering and exhibition when the “heat’s on”. In analogy-tiptoeing lightly amidst an overwhelming threat, and flamboyancy in the presence of a manageable danger. I think most animals react this way by instinct. Imagine a crook(greedy salesman etc) trying to scheme his way around this-could be sensed as ominous if not sensed, identified-or ordinary to be taken lightly-the engine is always in the dark(until it can bend some light its' way)

http://www.marvinekirsh.com
http://www.authorsden.com/marvinelikirsh

To Pentcho: I have copied a comment of my own from "Philosophical Pathways" (Philosophical society of England)conference on theories of existance as I think it says thesame butfroma different perspective to focus more on the historical:

Dear Mike: I will approach your question from the definition "That religion in description implies beyond test or witness. -Belief that is untestable and beyond the applicability of science. It cannot be assumed that this is the actual begining point of the beliefs of many. A valid religious belief has to be untestable by its' nature. This should exclude question 2 a-all religious belief is untestable. On question 3 if belief is challanged/confronted with knowledge, an emotional response can result. This still does not imply that an emotional response acknowledges the existance of an actual challange tobelief-only that it is or can be a sored issue. This might be how we come to interpret wars as of a religious nature if the emotion witnessed is from the soring but not from the actual conflict. If the actual events giving rise to a belief can be known and explained with sccience, this still does not invalidate or exclude the valid existance of religion itself-which still from the same elucdated issue can be redefined and renewed.
The belief in a creator is not the only possible valid belief to have. i.e. 'it all just is and was not created' Science assumes at least that something is at least "just is". my personal though that the name God has the same meaning to describe a property of all that is or "just is" that the world by virtue of its' successfull steps that give the present a witness(i.e ourselves" is such that way that witness to the route to survival(to a problem that like wise cannot exist without a possible solution) is necessarily a factor of what is. A point in time( the definition of which is under question currently in science) does not in my opinion have any real meaning but of an implication or unexactness-viz there is always a hypothesis and antithesis to any problem that is implyed by the branched structure of nature-the actual path though is unknowable-thenthere are at least two incorrect notions(probally boiling down to exactly two) with respect to exactness and one exact unknowable.
Religion(corrected to mean the existence of religion) is immune to science, though lesser truths of a belief can be elucidated. In some sense if one defines the world as all that is to define a creator means to imply that created itself. One can see examples of this in the biological sciences-self assembly of viruses, the obvious facts of proliferation. We project notions (probably from being on the short end of the stick) of intent to actions. If one considers some of the dangers we have created ourselves-i.e. nuclear devices, gene cloning, car emmisions-it appears that from experiences at the short end of stick-given the slightest mans to control(a non existing intention) we have applied force, in instances with feeling of controlling a loss of fear and respect-sense of having conquered(as nietzsche phrased it "loss of the fear of man of himself"). THis can be view from nay aspects and goes around in a circle as the mind works in attempts to establish a theorum of logic-each part validates the rest in the whole. Nietzsche mostly referewd to actions involving the Arians and the Jews-inaccurate naming and attribute giving as a source-Arian behavior growing into the existance of evil from good , bad and the unknown-having a loss of fear as if knowing all-surviving a profundity as if the only profundity -i.e birth. Man continually tresspass as did the Arians blindly in alien circumstances, as if the conquering of those specific alien circumstances-the feelings of conquering were applicable to all alien circumstances. They had conquered the (all that is) alien. A jump again from a perspective as at the short end of the stick(based an a very immature emotion. We can understandably, become alerted to challange religious belief especially with logic(the roots of science) as it spells a threat to survival. However I do think religion is at the root of the problem(at most are the practices of distinct populations associated with religious beliefs that had grown in the population).
That we still suffer an suffer in all endeavors(as I do not think most would have an argument with this presentaion of religion and science) from a lack of good defintion and exactly established meaning)..suffer and suffer in depths well beyond this simple example inthat 100 percent of all the science that we practice that employs change to nature, all of the physics theory we have constructed, has a false divide in it related to objectivity, poor catagorizaton and definition. It is all (not so obviously)false from a (environment originating)thinking habit of poor definitions (starting definitions) of the world of subjects and objects. Nietzsche had inthe 1800's a hope that science would conquer this problem -all science is the study of "subjectlings" only yet we have half the world defined mathematically -in relativity-for explanation-into separate parts -part defined by special relativity, and part by general relativity-a part -the former to account for the temporal-the real experienced world(the properties of space of) and the latter to expain what is not accounted for by the former...a mathematical definition(space-time) and current inquiry as to what spaces, in this huge mathematical conglomerate are we in. I do not think there are other spaces other than what we occupy, notonly in comon sense but the proposition itself lacksj science applicability as it is not testable and has no value what so ever in the realm of the living-in fact might or could be an exact desription of what is beyond-as a perfect circle is only in the mind and does not exist in the real world. God the creator as a perfect circle is not beyond feasibility-anything from it(a circle) could be said to be imperfect(an imperfect circle).
A danger rest from this theory based on its appeal and descending from and existing of false definition and meaning)-its ready acceptance, but filled with the "intent-action" notion of old concepts thought buried.

Marvin

Inconsistency Queen of Science 1850-2007

When you introduce a falsehood in physical science you cannot remove the respective truth from your theory. Rather, explicit falsehood and implicit truth form a powerful couple able to produce virtually any result you need. The following quotation is based on formal logic and is an exaggeration with respect to physical theories; nevertheless it is quite instructive:

W. H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science, Routledge, London, 1981, p. 229: "A theory ought to be internally consistent. The grounds for including this factor are a priori. For given a realist construal of theories, our concern is with verisimilitude, and if a theory is inconsistent it will contain every sentence of the language, as the following simple argument shows. Let ‘q’ be an arbitrary sentence of the language and suppose that the theory is inconsistent. This means that we can derive the sentence ‘p and not-p’. From this ‘p’ follows. And from ‘p’ it follows that ‘p or q’ (if ‘p’ is true then ‘p or q’ will be true no matter whether ‘q’ is true or not). Equally, it follows from ‘p and not-p’ that ‘not-p’. But ‘not-p’ together with ‘p or q’ entails ‘q’. Thus once we admit an inconsistency into our theory we have to admit everything. And no theory of verisimilitude would be acceptable that did not give the lowest degree of verisimilitude to a theory which contained each sentence of the theory’s language and its negation."

As soon as you introduce the magic contradictory couple rationality starts disappearing and you do not need valid arguments anymore. Invalid arguments increase the power of your theory additionally: whether "Reversible heat engines working between the same two temperatures have the same efficiency" does or does not really follow from "Heat never flows spontaneously from cold to hot" is a question brothers scientists would never ask.

The falsehood enables you to demonstrate miracles and become a divinity; the respective truth enables you