I’m like a fish in the Atlantic that knows nothing of a bear in the Blue Ridge mountains.

Since this is actually a poetry forum, I may even write a poem about a metaphorical fish, called:
“What Fish Believe”

After reading Genesis, that fish would creep onto land, seek out that bear, and claim to know the order of things. Of course, that bear would eat the fish, thus demonstrating the true order. Of course, that bear will be shot and killed by a hunter. And, of course, that hunter will skin the bear, and wear its fur during some pagan ceremony. Of course, that ceremony will be wiped out by a hurricane. And, of course, the hunter, remains of the bear, and the fish in the belly of the bear, will all be washed down river, back into the sea. Of course, the sea would reanimate the fish, and the fish will remark to another fish in the school, “you won’t believe what just happened.” His fish story will be told through the ages…

If I can fit all of that into a couple of lines, I may just have a poem. I think I could even make it work for the FUN forum.

busker,

You are just reiterating Mark’s argument. But it is the same fallacy. It is the Argument from Authority. Just because a really smart and successful person believes in a god does not mean they are correct, just because they are smart and correct on other matters. That’s like saying the Rams are more likely to win the Super Bowl just because a Nobel Prize winner picked them to.

If a Nobel Prize winner believes in a god, that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth of the assertion. The only thing that has bearing is the evidence they present itself for their belief. If they have evidence for god’s existence, then present it, have it challenged, replicated, peer-reviewed, etc. and then accept ANOTHER Noble Prize for it. Otherwise, it’s just an unsupported assertion.

We are pretty certain that your ethnicity, nationality, upbringing (parents’ religion), education, time period, etc. have much more to do with what religion you are than just freely choosing it by careful study and weighing the different religions and philosophies. Whether you are religious and what your religion is, is basically determined and chosen for you, so-to-speak.

Because I wonder (and I do not mean this as racist, because I discuss other races below), do you think someone named Mohammad Abdus Salam born in Jhang, Pakistan in 1926 to Chaudhry Muhammad Hussain and Hjira Hussain really “weighed” in on all of the religions of the world and picked the one “true” one to him after hours, weeks, months of careful study? We can only speculate, but what do think his chances were of being Christian or Atheist at that time and place, in that environment? Would you even give the odds at 1%?

Let’s reverse it. What if Mr. Abdus was a Caucasian baby-boomer born in Tennessee in 1947? What would be the odds he’d still be a Muslim? Why or why not?
Let’s reverse it again. What about Mr. Becker? If he were born in Iraq in 1965. What would be his chances of being a Catholic and writing that poem now on this site praising the Christian Bible for its prophetic scientific accuracies? Why?

And just because we’d LIKE for something to be true, does not mean it ACTUALLY is. I’d like for there to be a million dollars in my bank account, but that does not mean it is true. In order to believe something as factually true, there must be evidence to support it.

Meanwhile, I’m preparing the bait for “What Fish Believe”

Belief in The Bear and The Hunter will entice other fish to The Surface in search of proof.

Quote:You are just reiterating Mark’s argument.  But it is the same fallacy.  It is the Argument from Authority.  Just because a really smart and successful person believes in a god does not mean they are correct, just because they are smart and correct on other matters. 

Not at all. I was only picking a counter example to show that someone in the modern age could reconcile their faith in a deity and their science, since your argument was that Newton didn't know about DNA (effectively).

Quote:If a Nobel Prize winner believes in a god, that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth of the assertion.  The only thing that has bearing is the evidence they present itself for their belief.  If they have evidence for god’s existence, then present it, have it challenged, replicated, peer-reviewed, etc. and then accept ANOTHER Noble Prize for it.  Otherwise, it’s just an unsupported assertion.

Why should I accept that the null hypothesis is 'there is no god'? The null hypothesis can be anything. The only thing it can't be, is something that's already been disproved, or which is strongly contraindicated by current knowledge. So, for instance, I can't believe in a flat earth. I can't believe in gods dwelling atop Olympus. I can't believe in the Genesis account where land plants appeared before fish. I probably should not believe in the resurrection of a guy named Yehoshua. I probably should not believe that everything that Mohammed uttered, including why he could marry his adoptive daughter-in-law, was inspired. Or that anything he said, was.

But just like Andrew Wiles 'believed' in the truth of Fermat's last theorem - which is why he spent the better part of this life trying to solve it - and Jayant Narlikar 'believes' in the steady state theory even today because it is more elegant; likewise String Theory, you can 'believe' that there is some sort of a god or higher power without there being evidence for it. In fact, it can be argued that there will never be any evidence for it, just as it is possible there will never be any evidence for String Theory.

Quote:Because I wonder (and I do not mean this as racist, because I discuss other races below), do you think someone named Mohammad Abdus Salam born in Jhang, Pakistan in 1926 to Chaudhry Muhammad Hussain and Hjira Hussain really “weighed” in on all of the religions of the world and picked the one “true” one to him after hours, weeks, months of careful study?  We can only speculate, but what do think his chances were of being Christian or Atheist at that time and place, in that environment?  Would you even give the odds at 1%?

There was no Pakistan in 1926, only undivided India. But you are confusing being culturally Muslim, with actually believing in an Allah. Why would you assume that those who are culturally Muslim can't be atheists? In fact, the culturally Christians being atheists is a relatively recent phenomenon, only a couple of hundreds of years old. Atheistic attitudes in the east go back a long way.

Quote:And just because we’d LIKE for something to be true, does not mean it ACTUALLY is.  I’d like for there to be a million dollars in my bank account, but that does not mean it is true.  In order to believe something as factually true, there must be evidence to support it.

Again, you have arbitrarily chosen a null hypothesis that 'there is no god' and need evidence to abandon that hypothesis. That is your choice.
Remember Andrew Wiles. Or any meaningful science for that matter. All proper scientists have faith in an elegant solution (that's the whole reason for their being in science). Those who don't, are dull drones buzzing away for a paycheque, such as petroleum geologists.

(02-08-2022, 01:32 PM)Torkelburger Wrote:  P.s.

https://www.learnreligions.com/atheist-v...nce-248040

---

(02-08-2022, 08:11 AM)Tiger the Lion Wrote:  It seems strange to me that a simple "lack of belief" would compel such passionate evangelism.

I don’t understand.  Are you calling me a liar and suggesting I do not lack the belief in the existence of a god?  Or that anyone who holds the weak atheist position has no right to reply to religious lecturing?

If it’s really all that strange to you and bothering you, don’t read it.

I was commenting on this...

Note two things: 1) You do not need knowledge in order to have belief or not have belief. 2) The atheist position is NOT making the claim that “No gods exist”. The atheist position is that they *lack the belief* in god. There is a big difference.

So it is the "atheist position" I am addressing and am unsure how it became about your own personal level of honestly. (there is a big difference) Having said that, we are all liars, you and I included. So there's that. Apart from that, even as an aspiring poet, I most times articulate my ideas with imperfect eloquence. What I meant to say was...

it seems strange to me that a simple "lack of belief" would compel such passionate evangelism. 

Apologies for the confusion.

Quote:So it is the "atheist position" I am addressing and am unsure how it became about your own personal level of honestly. (there is a big difference)

Can you re-write this in a more clear and apprehensible manner?  With the grammatical and spelling errors, I'm not sure if I'm getting the right syntax.  And why did you write "(there is a big difference)"?  Can you elaborate what you are talking about?

Obviously, I never said we are not all liars.  The context of what I was asking should have been clear--in this instance, and this instance only, are you saying I'm lying about my beliefs (in my case, my lack of belief).

---

Quote:Not at all. I was only picking a counter example to show that someone in the modern age could reconcile their faith in a deity and their science, since your argument was that Newton didn't know about DNA (effectively).

 
Incorrect.  I never said they couldn’t.  Please note that at the bottom of that same post, I acknowledged that in a (relatively) recent and famous poll of a scientists, 33% of them believed in a personal god as opposed to 41% not believing in any god of any kind (while 18% believed in some kind of “higher power” as in a deist-type “watchmaker” sort of being or what George Carlin calls “The Great Electron” or something).

The point about Newton is that you are comparing apples to oranges because nobody knows what his beliefs would be TODAY, were he alive.  Yes, he could be in the 33% as in your counter-example, but he could have been in the 41%, given the new information available to him.  We don’t know.  That’s my point.  So, to mention some centuries-old super-popular scientist we all love and respect doesn’t mean much to me.  They are completely ignorant of too many things.  Just because we have a minority of scientists today who believe in a personal god, doesn’t mean he would too.  It's an Appeal to Authority anyway, and doesn't matter at all.

Quote:Why should I accept that the null hypothesis is 'there is no god'? The null hypothesis can be anything.

I never once said to accept the null hypothesis that “there is no god”.  In fact, I’ve said the opposite (that no one is saying “there is no god”).  I’ve stated I think more than once that the assertion that there is no god (a positive claim) and lacking the belief there is a god are two separate things.

You are wrong that the hypothesis can be anything.  It is a two-prong proposition.  Either a god or god(s) exist(s) or a god or god(s) do not exist(s).  A or not A.  One of those is, in fact, in reality, true.  If you assert one or the other, then you have to have evidence for it.  Otherwise, it’s just a baseless assertion believed to be true on faith alone.

Quote:Again, you have arbitrarily chosen a null hypothesis that 'there is no god' and need evidence to abandon that hypothesis. That is your choice.

I have done no such thing.  I have argued against doing that very thing over and over in this thread.  I am an agnostic atheist.  I do not know if there is a god.  That is exactly why I do not believe one exists.  I do not know if there is NOT a god either.  That is exactly why I do not believe a god does NOT exist.  I lack both beliefs.  That is an agnostic atheist.  BTW, saying you lack a belief is “weak” atheism as opposed to “strong” atheism, which would state that “no gods exist”.  In some cases, which you’ve mentioned earlier, this is satisfactory.  Some atheists use this in certain instances as in denying the existence of the Biblical Christian God as defined in the Bible on the basis of the definition leading to logical contradictions, so it cannot logically exist.  Or in your example of the Olympus gods.  However, I do not take that stance.
 
I’ll have to address your other points later tomorrow or later this week.

Quote:
Incorrect.  I never said they couldn’t.  

See below:

Quote:Christians love to point out that Newton and other prominent scientists from a long time ago were either Christian or theists. But this is a very weak argument for theism. This does not make Christianity or theism the least bit true. It doesn’t even make it reasonable. It is a logical fallacy.

There are a few problems with this way of thinking. The main problem is that it refers to people from CENTURIES ago. Why is that a problem? Because scientists like Newton were not aware of scientific discoveries and breakthroughs that we have gained after his lifetime, and knowledge we have learned since then, namely: Evolution, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Dinosaurs, Edwin Hubble’s discoveries with the Hooker Telescope, spectrometry, the Hubble Telescope, Cosmic Background Radiation, etc., etc., etc.

The 'because' posits a causal (though no necessarily exclusive) relationship between Newton's ignorance of things like evolution, and his belief in a Christian god. 

Quote:You are wrong that the hypothesis can be anything.  It is a two-prong proposition.  Either a god or god(s) exist(s) or a god or god(s) do not exist(s).  A or not A.  One of those is, in fact, in reality, true.  If you assert one or the other, then you have to have evidence for it.  Otherwise, it’s just a baseless assertion believed to be true on faith alone.

Actually, no. The null hypothesis is the default hypothesis. It doesn't need to be proven. However, it needs to be disproven if you're to discard it. 
A two-pronged proposition is not necessarily a null hypothesis. That's just how you're choosing to frame it.
Your choice of a null hypothesis is 'there is no evidence for the existence or non-existence of a god'. Good for you.

Quote:
I have done no such thing.  I have argued against doing that very thing over and over in this thread.  I am an agnostic atheist.  I do not know if there is a god.  That is exactly why I do not believe one exists.  I do not know if there is NOT a god either.  That is exactly why I do not believe a god does NOT exist.  I lack both beliefs.  

You can have similar ambivalence about pretty much anything, such as Planck's constant, or the gravitational constant, the steady state theory, or the curvature of the earth. It is very easy to say 'there is no evidence either way to a level that satisfies me personally, so I choose not to have a personal belief either way'. For Planck's constant, you can choose to have faith in the scientists who carried out the necessary experiment or not, for the steady state theory you can choose to believe that Fred Hoyle, Narlikar, and that particular school of physics have something, for the curvature of the earth you can choose to ignore the evidence of your eyes since the senses are not infallible. 
That's entirely up to you, and if you choose to sit on the fence, there's no reason why it is an intellectually superior position to take.

I’m pretty sure atheists believe there is no god. But you can test gravity out for yourself!

(02-10-2022, 12:18 PM)Xlateralus Wrote:  I’m pretty sure atheists believe there is no god. But you can test gravity out for yourself!

I wasn’t referring to gravity as a concept, friend.
Cavendish’s experiment that determines the value of G to be ~6x10^-11 Nm2/kg2 is not something that you can just rig up on a Sunday. Have you tried it?

(02-10-2022, 12:45 PM)busker Wrote:  

(02-10-2022, 12:18 PM)Xlateralus Wrote:  I’m pretty sure atheists believe there is no god. But you can test gravity out for yourself!

I wasn’t referring to gravity as a concept, friend.
Cavendish’s experiment that determines the value of G to be ~6x10^-11 Nm2/kg2 is not something that you can just rig up on a Sunday. Have you tried it?

Details. We can discuss whether or not god exists without having to know the length of his pubic hair, don’t you think?

(02-10-2022, 01:30 PM)Xlateralus Wrote:  

(02-10-2022, 12:45 PM)busker Wrote:  

(02-10-2022, 12:18 PM)Xlateralus Wrote:  I’m pretty sure atheists believe there is no god. But you can test gravity out for yourself!

I wasn’t referring to gravity as a concept, friend.
Cavendish’s experiment that determines the value of G to be ~6x10^-11 Nm2/kg2 is not something that you can just rig up on a Sunday. Have you tried it?

Details. We can discuss whether or not god exists without having to know the length of his pubic hair, don’t you think?

What are you on about?
The point was that we take many things on faith simply because it is too tiring, even impossible, to live otherwise. Such as assuming that the work done by scientists in measuring G was correct.
Sitting on the fence BECAUSE you don’t have perfect information is therefore a bogus position to take because you will never have perfect information about most things in life.

Well, if there's one thing I know, it's that if Newton lived today, he would have thanked God for the existence of machines that calculate pi.

As a functional crazy person, I think the key to this universe is having just enough illogical comprehension to handle the unthinkable that absolutely happens on a daily basis.  Logic itself is a dangerous rabbit hole that collapses under real events. Like a stiff board breaking under pressure, be flexible.

I find it most interesting that people from varying backgrounds, religious or not, have worked together, and contiue to work together, on some of the most difficult problems in science. 

Francis Collins was director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH from 1993-2008, and retired as director of the National Institutes of Health in 2021, and he is an avowed Christian.  The human genome project was an important, and significant scientific undertaking. Those are facts, and whether I agree or disagree with Collins' faith is beside the point. It is also a fact that he had a platform at the highest levels of government. This is when his personal religious views clouded the scientific success of that project. I personally do not appreciate that work on the genome project became politicized across three US administrations. His 2006 book "The Language of God" managed to piss off  many young-earth-creationists and many scientists. 

One specific example of collaboration is that of Christof Koch (former Catholic) and Francis Crick (avowed atheist) who worked together on the “hard problem” of consciousness in the 1980's. (Crick/Watson/Wilkons received the Nobel in 1962 for their 1953 discovery of the DNA's double helix structure.  It is unfortunate that a Jewish woman, Rosalind Franklin, did not receive the recognition she was due, that was crucial to the work of Crick et al, until long after the Nobel was awarded in '62, more likely because she was a woman, than because of her religion.).

From an interview with Steve Paulson in the Atlantic, 2012, Koch was asked, “Given your own background as a Catholic, did you talk much about religion with Crick?”

Koch answered:  “We did. He was gentle with respect to my faith. When I first met him I still went to church and took my family there. He didn't push me in any aggressive way. He knew I had some religious sensibilities but it didn't impede our ability to have vigorous discussions about the neural correlates of consciousness. I guess his ardor for fighting against religion had cooled by the time I met him.”

Up to the present day, scientists of many different beliefs, or non-beliefs, have collabororated to move science forward, and I don't know that many worry about a "non-overlapping magesteria" between science and religion, as posited by Stephen Gould in 1997.  They're too busy working.

---

(02-10-2022, 10:39 PM)CRNDLSM Wrote:  As a functional crazy person, I think the key to this universe is having just enough illogical comprehension to handle the unthinkable that absolutely happens on a daily basis.  Logic itself is a dangerous rabbit hole that collapses under real events. Like a stiff board breaking under pressure, be flexible.

Try reading "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" by James Gleick (2011). If nothing else, it will help you become crazier quicker.

---

(02-10-2022, 02:14 PM)busker Wrote:  ... you will never have perfect information about most things in life.

Amen to that, brother.

(02-11-2022, 05:24 AM)Mark A Becker Wrote:   It is unfortunate that a Jewish woman, Rosalind Franklin, did not receive the recognition she was due, that was crucial to the work of Crick et al, until long after the Nobel was awarded in '62, more likely because she was a woman, than because of her religion.).

This is a myth. 
I've been hearing of Rosland Franklin since the 80s. There is no evidence that she was anything other than famous.
She did not receive the Nobel because Nobels are not awarded posthumously. No exceptions.
Rosalind Franklin was working in John Randall's lab at the time when she took the first X ray pictures of the DNA molecule. Linus Pauling had already conjectured that the molecule was a triple helix (without seeing any of Franklin's work), and it was only a matter of time before someone took a stab at a double helix structure. This Watson and Crick did, while Franklin was happy to wait until more evidence became available, and so 'lost out'. Of course, she didn't really lose out because her name was immortalised.

---

To be clear, the molecular structure of DNA wasn't path breaking work like General Relativity, the Schrodinger equation, or the periodic table. It was just pushing known science an inch over the edge of a cliff that it was already perched on.
Sometimes it's a mystery as to why certain discoveries become more famous than others.

---

Collins is an interesting personality. Thanks for bringing him up. Will read his book.

(02-11-2022, 06:12 AM)busker Wrote:  Sometimes it's a mystery as to why certain discoveries become more famous than others.

---

Collins is an interesting personality. Thanks for bringing him up. Will read his book.

The genome project may have gained so much visibility because 3 US presidents spoke publicly about it. And anything said by presidents is deemed “newsworthy”.

The Gleick books are very interesting, as well.

I also get a kick out of books written by John Horgan. And especially his articles in Scientific American.

---

also, busker,

It is interesting that Crick and Wilkins were influenced by Schrodinger's book "What Is Life?" (1944).

The work Schrodinger did was crucial to quantum mechanics. Yet certain discoveries, like his, are not as famous as others because they're difficult to express to ordinary people, like me. They need to dumbed down so that even I can understand them: quantum mechanics explains why certain modern things work, like GPS, cell phones, computers, etc...

"... the molecular structure of DNA wasn't path breaking work like General Relativity, the Schrodinger equation, or the periodic table"

The easily understood elgance of the model of the double helix lends to its fame. That it looks like a work of art makes it highly relatable.

re Rosalind Franklin, afaik it's more complicated than that.

Watson was an asshole, Franklin's work was an unacknowledged -- in Watson's specific case, probably willfully unacknowledged -- influence on the work of Watson, Crick, and Wilkins, and Franklin did experience (and participate in) a lot of the institutional sexism of her day. Apparently posthumous Nobel prizes were a thing, if rare, before 1974, when they were formally restricted: just a year before, in 1961, Dag Hammarskjold won a Nobel shortly after his death by plane crash. But the only other time a posthumous Nobel was awarded was also in the same year after death, and at four years after her death, not only would she have been unable to plead her case (not that, by most accounts, she would have cared to plead it), but no one would have thought it reasonable to do so.

All that said, one of the people who won the Nobel later on -- Aaron Klug -- worked with Franklin specifically, and was the chief beneficiary of her will: it's known she would have shared his award in 1982, were she still alive by then. Really, if she were a victim, which she probably would have loathed to be thought of as such, then she was a victim of tragic irony, as it was most likely her work with radioactive substances that sparked her fatal case of ovarian cancer.

(02-11-2022, 03:21 PM)RiverNotch Wrote:  re Rosalind Franklin, afaik it's more complicated than that.

Watson was an asshole, Franklin's work was an unacknowledged -- in Watson's specific case, probably willfully unacknowledged -- influence on the work of Watson, Crick, and Wilkins,

Rosalind Franklin is mentioned 87 times in Watson's 1968 book The Double Helix. There is no evidence that she was 'unacknowledged'. Watson didn't like her personally, in the beginning, and that is perfectly fine. She was not the easiest person to deal with.

Quote:and Franklin did experience (and participate in) a lot of the institutional sexism of her day. 

there were two sides to that sexism - one side ensured that a generation before, it wasn't the women of Britain who were dying in the trenches. At any rate, this isn't pertinent.

Quote:Apparently posthumous Nobel prizes were a thing, if rare, before 1974, when they were formally restricted: just a year before, in 1961, Dag Hammarskjold won a Nobel shortly after his death by plane crash. But the only other time a posthumous Nobel was awarded was also in the same year after death, and at four years after her death, not only would she have been unable to plead her case (not that, by most accounts, she would have cared to plead it), but no one would have thought it reasonable to do so.

Both Dag H and Erik Karlfeldt, though technically awarded the Nobel posthumously, died in the same year of their award.
Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel in 1962 - 10 years after their discovery. 
The rule even prior to 1974 was:

Prior to 1974, a person could be awarded a prize posthumously if they had already been nominated before February of the same year. That was the case for Erik Axel Karlfeldt, who won the Nobel prize in literature in 1931, and Dag Hammarskjöld, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1961.
(https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011...-scientist)

Quote:All that said, one of the people who won the Nobel later on -- Aaron Klug -- worked with Franklin specifically, and was the chief beneficiary of her will: it's known she would have shared his award in 1982, were she still alive by then. 

why on god's good earth?
Rosalind Franklin did not invent x ray crystallography. Nor was she the only person in her time applying it to study molecular structures. The very team that she was working in, under Wilkins, was doing precisely that. In fact, the famous Photo 51 was taken by Raymond Gosling, a grad student in the lab.
Her exploits in one field can't possibly be the basis for her to take credit  for someone else's achievements in a different field. 
Franklin was a talented crystallographer, that's pretty much it. She may have had a stab at immortality if she'd made a leap in the dark and surmised the structure of DNA. The evidence was there in front of her, but she couldn't see it.
And actually, Pauling was the first to publicly propose a helical structure. Maybe he should've shared a third Nobel.

Quote:Really, if she were a victim, which she probably would have loathed to be thought of as such, then she was a victim of tragic irony, as it was most likely her work with radioactive substances that sparked her fatal case of ovarian cancer.

There was nothing in her background, coming from an upper middle class English family and graduating with second class honours from Cambridge, that suggests that she'd have been one of science's immortals. Like James Dean, it was her tragic death at a young age that did it.

---

The smartest of the bunch was Crick, because he was a physicist.
All science is either physics, or stamp collecting.

(02-11-2022, 04:23 PM)busker Wrote:  All science is either physics, or stamp collecting.

Darwin was a pretty good stamp collector.