Evolution skeptics will soon be silenced by science: Richard Leakey

by cantleave 30 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  BluesBrother

  Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

  Is he predicting the fall of Babylon The Great (and the WTS)?
• 

  slimboyfat

  Deepity alert!

  Derivative Dawkins vacuity alert!
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  slimboyfat

  Whether knowledge is so loose-weaveOf a morning
  When deciding whether to leave
  Her apartment by the front door
  Or a window on the second floor.

  ---Tim Minchin

  A good illustration. Some scientivists only admit of one solution - use the door. Pragmatism allows that sometimes there may be a house fire and other options may need exploring.
• 

  cofty

  Deepity alert - me

  Derivative Dawkins vacuity alert! - You

  Daniel Dennett actually.

  I think you are in danger of falling into the philosophical vacuum of "last Thursdayism".

  Evolution isn't a story like any other. That squirrel outside my window really did have an ancestor that is also my forebear. It actually did happen in the real world.

  If I kick you in the balls your brain really will receive powerful signals - how you react to them may be in part culturally determined but the signals and inflamation and loss of function will be real.

  Science really works. Philosophy is a method of gazing at our collective navels.
• 

  talesin

  Philosophy is a method of gazing at our collective navels.

  shocking - Should we do NO THINKING of our own? I don't presume to think you have ever read philosophy, but my guess would be, very little. I would also guess that folks like Dawkins, Einstein and Darwin read plenty of philosophy.

  Do you have a narrow view of this topic?

  Why would you say such a thing?

  t
• 

  John_Mann

  The ET it's the most complete scientific theory, if somebody denies it it's like denying the whole science. The science does not works with pick and choose like religion but it's all interdependent.
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  slimboyfat

  Evolution is a story. It should be judged on pragmatic and aesthetic grounds rather than its supposed approximation to whatever we call reality. And by those criteria I think it often performs rather well actually. What it can't do, or should not be supposed to provide, are final answers. Yet the fact that many take it as doing so is demonstrated by the "silencing" of the thread title. Some scientific thought tends toward that mentality.

  That squirrel outside my window really did have an ancestor that is also my forebear.

  Squirrel, ancestor and forebear are culturally contingent concepts. Besides which it is not scientifically impossible, if unlikely, that you don't share ancestors. Such as if there is more than one origin of life on earth. (I know why this is not thought to be correct, but is it impossible?) Or if the story needs to be amended in some as yet unpredictable way. Who can say that is to be utterly ruled out? Who can say the story as science currently has it is the final story? It never has been before!

  I have read both sides of the argument. I've read books by Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris. But I've also read about post structuralism and social constructionism from its supporters. Perhaps you have been prejudiced against constructionism by what Dawkins and Dennett in particular have to say. Have you ever read anything from the other side? I think you'd find there is more to it than their caricatures allow.
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  cofty

  talesin - I am no expert on philosophy but don't panic I have the greatest of respect for philosophers. Dan Dennett has been my introduction to modern philosophy. My comment about navel gaving was to contrast the theoretical if interesting position SBF is proposing with the pragmatic nature of science. Thus the illustration of a kick in the balls - please feel free adapt it to suit. We can talk about social constrictionism but a kick in the balls produces real and unpleasant results.

  SBF - You are right I am mostly ignorant of the arguments you are talking about. I find myself intuitively allergic to them and that's not a position I am seeking to defend. Science works. It wlil change and adapt and be refined with new knowledge but it works and its infinitely superior to philosophy when it comes to getting stuff done in the world. We may well discover the root of the tree of life has more than one trunk but we won't discover the earth is flat or common descent isn't a fact.
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  Phizzy

  Science can tell us why we live, Philosophy can tell us how to live.
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  John_Mann

  The ET doen not apply only to organic systems but it encompasses a lot of things like languages, cosmologics, economics and even computer softwares.