[MD] Dawkins a Materialist

[ian glendinning]

DMB (and Case, and David M, and Platt) ...

DMB I'm disappointed you move away from the specifics to generalise
and throw in aspertions about me personally and my thinking generally
(that's the kind of ad-hominem approach that should be censored by
Horse) ... let's go back to the specific again ...

(1) You missed the sentence after the one you quoted (my main point as
I said) "The real point is "blind" faith in authoritity (a purely
social quality), something science avoids." Something I'd hope you'd
agree with.

(2) You attributed to me "For all its objectivism, science also relies
on an absence of evidence (in its methods)." I didn't say that. Please
listen up.

(3) You phrased the same point as a request. "Explain to me how the
scienctific method is based on faith."

I say what you cannot see is the "belief in scientific method as a
matter of faith" is something quite distinct from the (clearly dumb)
idea that "scientfic method is based on faith". If I'd expressed the
dumb idea, you'd have a point.

>From where I stand Dawkins is "dogmatic" about the right approach
being scientific method. Every idea is contingent to explanation and
expirical testing according to scientific method, except the very idea
that scientific method is the only correct approach.

A very subtle point I'll grant you, and I'm the first to defend the
content of scientific method as the highest quality approach, given
other lower quality faith-based alternatives. But that does not mean
that the choice of scientific method is the only approach to all
situations ever. That would be a dogmatic assertion.

Platt, points you made, that are relevant here ... I paraphrase for now ?
"Scientific method (and DMB) would not deny basic cause-effect
consequences" I think you said, and you also said something like
"Everything is amenable to reductionism". These are classical
misconceptions that we need to unpick ....

This mail has not the space to do it.

Ian


On 12/29/06, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ian glendinning said:
> ...It's not the faith, but the kind of faith that matters. For all its
> objectivism, science also relies on faith (in its methods). It still has
> mysterious beliefs at its boundaries. The real point is "blind" faith in
> authoritity (a purely social quality), something science avoids.
>
> dmb says:
> Science relies on faith and has mysterious beliefs? Yes, so you have said
> many times and I have disagreed nearly as many. I can only assume that you
> mean something other than faith when you use the word "faith". The meaning
> of that term is such that your assertions here are nonsense. If faith is a
> belief held in the absence of evidence or in contradiction of the evidence,
> then your first sentence would read something like... "It's not the
> unsupported belief, but the kind of unjustified view that matters." Your
> second assertion would have to say something like... "For all its
> objectivism, science also relies on an absence of evidence (in its
> methods)." And, because I'm using the normal definition for the word "faith"
> here, I fail to see the difference between faith and "blind" faith. Its okay
> if your point is simply to add some emphasis or whatever, but as I
> understand the term, all faith is blind.
>
> So, as you can imagine, I don't just disagree about these particular points
> when you say stuff like this. It also makes me skeptical about your ability
> to reason or think in general. I mean, its just seems really, really dumb.
> Please, help me out here. Explain to me how the scienctific method is based
> on faith. Explain it to me. In what sense does science have mysterious
> beliefs? I could be mistaken, but these notions look like drivel to me. I
> suspect you are being sloppy and are treating starting points, assumptions
> and such as if they were acts of faith. Or maybe you think a faith based
> belief is anything that we hold in the absense of absolute certainty or some
> other impossible standard. I don't know. You tell me. I'm just guessing. All
> I know is, according to my understanding of faith, science and the english
> language, your comments make no sense. Again.
>
> dmb
>
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