Dawkins did not justify the scientific method in this clip. "It works" is an inductive argument (as Stephen Law affirms at :52) which faces the problem of induction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

It works the last time you checked, but why should it continue to work? To justify it you have to presuppose that the future will be like the past. What is the evidence that the future will be like the past? It's in the past, and thus the presupposition is based upon circular reasoning, a logical fallacy.

Nope. The scientific method is the epitome of pragmatism. It does not claim to find "The Truth", it claims to find "the model that most reliably predicts measurable results."

It neither pretends, nor needs, to be more.

[edit to standardize the tenses]

Even though I agree with him, I'm not quite satisfied with his answer.

There must be better ways to "justify" (whatever that means) the scientific method other than for its pragmatism.

I think teaching students basic scientific method when they are young can prevent willful rejection of science, due to ignorance, later in life. Non-scientists can't possibly know everything, yet, if they are sufficiently enlightened in scientific method, they can comfortably accept truths that are revealed using scientific method. Additionally, scientists needn't require proof for knowledge widely accepted by the scientific communities outside their particular areas of expertise.

Specialization also eliminates the need to know everything. Scientists know they stand on the shoulders of giants, that there was much to discover and learn long before they arrived in the world. But they don't have to know everything. It's like Sean Carroll discusses (kind of) in this video. You can be a physicist and know little of geology.


Edited: clumsy, nonsensical sentences

I'll never get over how people like this must be walked through each part of deduction, the scientific method and how it applies to evolution, when their whole ideological model consists of:

"I did it."
"OK."

excellent, once you are exposed to the reasoning like this, it helps build the chain of trust people use in the scientific method -- reproducibility

Yeah that's it's problem in my view. It brings up serious issues and mashes them together with spurious links trying to build a case that we're being controlled by like a shadow group of evil people. It's deceptive and it's a waste of energy. There's STILL people who get together and have meetings about which mob member was in on the Kennedy assassination. When they could be spending time working towards real change.

Alex Jones is a screaming and kicking paranoid baby. He doesn't use any scientific method to come to his conclusions, he's just fucking insane.

Bollocks.

Not once has a scientist made a discovery and gone "shit the bible was right about this the whole time".

If there are theologians on the top of that mountain,
1. they got there on the backs of scientists
2. they refuse to believe they're not still in a field
3. they're so blinded by their faith that they're missing the awesome view all around them

The conception of being able to uncover the laws governing the Universe by investigating secondary causes is an idea advanced by Christian scientists. It was the belief that God created a lawfully ordered Universe that we could investigate with our reason which led to what is called the scientific method today. Every discovery we've ever made confirms the regularity of the Cosmos and the intelligibility (which is evidence for intelligent causation)

“The only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”

Wow. I'm not here to argue whether or not evolution is true or not; thought I was clear about that. You're welcome to it over at talkorigins.org I, for one, don't think evolution is falsifiable since it isn't reproducible. I didn't say it didn't happen. Just that it isn't falsifiable. I can find evolutionists who both disagree with me and agree with me. It's just my position. Since the scientific method requires experimentation to prove the theory, well, I think there is a problem there. You don't. OK. I'm good with that. >> ^PalmliX:

You can't apply the scientific method to evolution!?!? How exactly do you think the theory has come to exist? Without the scientific method there would be no theory of evoloution.
Of course the scientific method is in the hands of imperfect human beings, we created it, who else's hands would it be in? Yes humans are imperfect and that can sometimes lead to bad science, but the answer to bad science isn't no science, it's more science.
Should we just give up on science all together because humans aren't perfect? How else do you suggest we separate fact from fantasy? Truth from fiction? I really find your philosophy troubling because it seems to suggest that since we can't know everything, right away, perfectly, that we might as well not try?
Also I really don't care about some inane argument Dawkins made that has now been refuted. As I've said before, he's just one man and at the end of the day his opinions really don't matter, his thoughts on evolution in no way change the facts of evolution or the validity of the scientific method in general.
It's a silly semantic game that you play when you say 'I didn't hear Keller say there is or isn't a god, or evolution is bunk' etc... Yes he didn't use those exact words but the larger issue at hand is the same and you know it!
Finally, evolution isn't falsifiable? I stopped taking science after grade 10 and I can already think of a couple ways evolution could be falsified. For example, if we found an organism that couldn't have been formed from the evolutionary process, or if we found the fossil of an animal that existed in a time that would have been impossible by evolutionary predictions. I'm sure biologists have come up with a lot more.
>> ^silvercord:
In this clip I don't hear Keller say there is or isn't a God. I don't hear him say that evolution is bunk or not. I hear him saying that Dawkins argument is spurious for several reasons.
As I understand it, the scientific method requires that something must be falsifiable; evolution is not. I'm not saying evolution doesn't happen, just that you can't apply the scientific method to it. Also, the scientific method is always in the hands of humans. That is the fly in the ointment. Humans are hugely fallible. The method may be perfect, but the handlers aren't.
I think it would be beneficial to watch the entire talk so that Keller isn't being made the problem for pointing out the problem. There is a problem and it isn't Keller or me. It isn't you either. It's the fallibility of humans not being taken into account in this equation.

You can't apply the scientific method to evolution!?!? How exactly do you think the theory has come to exist? Without the scientific method there would be no theory of evoloution.

Of course the scientific method is in the hands of imperfect human beings, we created it, who else's hands would it be in? Yes humans are imperfect and that can sometimes lead to bad science, but the answer to bad science isn't no science, it's more science.

Should we just give up on science all together because humans aren't perfect? How else do you suggest we separate fact from fantasy? Truth from fiction? I really find your philosophy troubling because it seems to suggest that since we can't know everything, right away, perfectly, that we might as well not try?

Also I really don't care about some inane argument Dawkins made that has now been refuted. As I've said before, he's just one man and at the end of the day his opinions really don't matter, his thoughts on evolution in no way change the facts of evolution or the validity of the scientific method in general.

It's a silly semantic game that you play when you say 'I didn't hear Keller say there is or isn't a god, or evolution is bunk' etc... Yes he didn't use those exact words but the larger issue at hand is the same and you know it!

Finally, evolution isn't falsifiable? I stopped taking science after grade 10 and I can already think of a couple ways evolution could be falsified. For example, if we found an organism that couldn't have been formed from the evolutionary process, or if we found the fossil of an animal that existed in a time that would have been impossible by evolutionary predictions. I'm sure biologists have come up with a lot more.

>> ^silvercord:

In this clip I don't hear Keller say there is or isn't a God. I don't hear him say that evolution is bunk or not. I hear him saying that Dawkins argument is spurious for several reasons.
As I understand it, the scientific method requires that something must be falsifiable; evolution is not. I'm not saying evolution doesn't happen, just that you can't apply the scientific method to it. Also, the scientific method is always in the hands of humans. That is the fly in the ointment. Humans are hugely fallible. The method may be perfect, but the handlers aren't.
I think it would be beneficial to watch the entire talk so that Keller isn't being made the problem for pointing out the problem. There is a problem and it isn't Keller or me. It isn't you either. It's the fallibility of humans not being taken into account in this equation.

In this clip I don't hear Keller say there is or isn't a God. I don't hear him say that evolution is bunk or not. I hear him saying that Dawkins argument is spurious for several reasons.

As I understand it, the scientific method requires that something must be falsifiable; evolution is not. I'm not saying evolution doesn't happen, just that you can't apply the scientific method to it. Also, the scientific method is always in the hands of humans. That is the fly in the ointment. Humans are hugely fallible. The method may be perfect, but the handlers aren't.

I think it would be beneficial to watch the entire talk so that Keller isn't being made the problem for pointing out the problem. There is a problem and it isn't Keller or me. It isn't you either. It's the fallibility of humans not being taken into account in this equation.

>> ^PalmliX:

Who cares if he quotes two "respectable secular sources"? Just because someone is "respected" and "secular" doesn't mean that what they have to say on any given subject will be truthful or even meaningful.
Even if the most respected scientist in the world came out and said that God was absolutely real it still wouldn't matter. They wouldn't be able to provide any evidence for their claim and at the end of the day the opinion of one, or even several scientists isn't all that important. It's the facts that matter, things that we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true.
As far as I can tell, Tim Keller's basic point is that a belief in evolution is the same as a belief in a god because if evolution is correct and our beliefs are formed purely for survival reasons and don't necessarily tell us what is true, than how can judge the objective truth of our various beliefs?
Well I know of one particularly effective way of judging our beliefs. It's called the scientific method and it works because it only deals with facts, only with things that can be proven true. Anything else is useless.
I'm glad that you found Plantiga's observation fascinating as well as humorous, and Lewis' comments on transparency germane to the conversation, but so what? So what if his audience is UC Berkly and they laughed at his jokes? This doesn't change the facts of our universe. Now maybe as you said, Keller's point has been lost in translation and I'm just not 'getting it', so please help me to understand.
>> ^silvercord:
Why is it that he is quoting two respectable SECULAR sources for the refutation of Dawkins', et al, conclusions and is first being accused of arguing against evolution (he isn't doing this) and then being accused as the one who didn't think the refutation through. Hmmmm.
I find Plantiga's observation fascinating as well as humorous, btw, and Lewis' comments on transparency germane to the conversation. It seems his audience (UC Berkeley) is tracking. Maybe it's being lost in translation here.
>> ^PalmliX:
Why explain or attempt to know anything then? I just don't get the point this guy is trying to make. Are there not facts that exist in this universe? When I leave the apartment every morning I take the elevator I don't jump out of my 10th floor window. Is my "belief" in gravity the same as someone else's "belief" in god?
I seriously think this guy doesn't actually understand the scientific process. Science ONLY deals with facts. It ONLY deals with things we can know FOR SURE. Now if provable facts aren't enough for this guy then nothing ever will be.

Who cares if he quotes two "respectable secular sources"? Just because someone is "respected" and "secular" doesn't mean that what they have to say on any given subject will be truthful or even meaningful.

Even if the most respected scientist in the world came out and said that God was absolutely real it still wouldn't matter. They wouldn't be able to provide any evidence for their claim and at the end of the day the opinion of one, or even several scientists isn't all that important. It's the facts that matter, things that we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true.

As far as I can tell, Tim Keller's basic point is that a belief in evolution is the same as a belief in a god because if evolution is correct and our beliefs are formed purely for survival reasons and don't necessarily tell us what is true, than how can judge the objective truth of our various beliefs?

Well I know of one particularly effective way of judging our beliefs. It's called the scientific method and it works because it only deals with facts, only with things that can be proven true. Anything else is useless.

I'm glad that you found Plantiga's observation fascinating as well as humorous, and Lewis' comments on transparency germane to the conversation, but so what? So what if his audience is UC Berkly and they laughed at his jokes? This doesn't change the facts of our universe. Now maybe as you said, Keller's point has been lost in translation and I'm just not 'getting it', so please help me to understand.
>> ^silvercord:

Why is it that he is quoting two respectable SECULAR sources for the refutation of Dawkins', et al, conclusions and is first being accused of arguing against evolution (he isn't doing this) and then being accused as the one who didn't think the refutation through. Hmmmm.
I find Plantiga's observation fascinating as well as humorous, btw, and Lewis' comments on transparency germane to the conversation. It seems his audience (UC Berkeley) is tracking. Maybe it's being lost in translation here.
>> ^PalmliX:
Why explain or attempt to know anything then? I just don't get the point this guy is trying to make. Are there not facts that exist in this universe? When I leave the apartment every morning I take the elevator I don't jump out of my 10th floor window. Is my "belief" in gravity the same as someone else's "belief" in god?
I seriously think this guy doesn't actually understand the scientific process. Science ONLY deals with facts. It ONLY deals with things we can know FOR SURE. Now if provable facts aren't enough for this guy then nothing ever will be.

Don't try and pawn this off on me. It's not my "excuse". I'm closed only to one idea: of my being absolutely certain about anything. I'm not closed to any other idea, period. You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story. And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

Let me get this straight..you're completely closed to the idea of being absolutely certain of something. Think about that for a minute and see if you can spot the inherent contradiction contained within this idea.

If I say there is absolute truth, and someone says no there isn't, and I say are you absolutely sure about that?, this isn't a trivial question. That's what I used to think, that it was some kind of cheap trick, and ultimately meaningless. Don't be like I was and just dismiss this without giving it a great deal of thought. The fact is, you can't deny the idea of absolute truth without confirming it. It's not a cheap parlor cheap of logic, it is a revelation of the framework of reality, of how things really work. That there really is a certain truth, and everything you ultimately believe, flawed logic and all, ultimately points to it. It actually could be no other way. There is a ground for everything we know and understand. The atheist says though that's he is standing on air. The issue is that subjective beings can't know anything about objective reality so they grope around in the dark trying to understand what truth is. An atheism has no route to get beyond his subjective understanding. The only way you can understand truth then is by the light of revelation. IE, someone without objective understanding (an omniscient being) would have to enlighten you. If you've never seen light then you won't understand what darkness is. Jesus said if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

What I believe is that you were not systematic in trying to understand your experience. When you woke up from it and figured out that you were being led down a path to insanity, you just wrote the whole thing off as being entirely in your mind. I would liken this to coming home one day and finding a group of thieves moving furniture out of your house and loading it into a truck. You ask them what they're doing and they say that they are a moving company and that you called them and set up an appointment 2 weeks ago to move you out, and don't you remember? Oh wow, you say, it must have skipped my mind! It looks like it was just a rash idea of mine, really sorry for this inconvenience! You then proceed to help them move your furniture back into your house.

As you're moving everything back in, you notice the door has been busted open and the house has been ransacked. You ask them about this and they say that just earlier you were here trying to let them into house but you couldn't find your key so you kicked the door in because you didn't want to keep them waiting. You then tore the house apart looking for your keys, and when you found them you left to go get something to eat and that's where you've been this whole time. Pondering this you decide that if you could forget about calling them in the first place then you could most certainly forget about doing all of those other things too.

So you finally get everything back in the house and you again apologize profusely for wasting their time, but as they are leaving, they say don't worry about it because we were never here. We're just part of a dream you're having. Goodbye! You think to yourself, considering the memory problems I've been having, this seems very reasonable. The next day a friend stops by and asks you what happened to your house. Oh, it was all a bad dream, you say. I apparently did all of this in my sleep, but it's over now, not to worry!

I don't know what your experience was; typically, they try to convince you that you're some kind of Messiah-like figure, or that reality is centered around you in some way. What I do know is that things happened to you which you cannot explain; signs and wonders, strange "coincidences", etc. These were the signposts in your journey that reinforced your paradigm and kept you on that road. You want to believe that it was all in your head rather than a strategic plan to destroy you, so you chalk it up to delusion. It wasn't all delusion, though; you were being herded down a path, probably with the goal of getting you to kill yourself, and it's only because they went too far that you woke up from that spell.

You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story.

I can't convince you of anything. This isn't an intellectual problem that you're having, it is an issue of your heart. Only God can convince you, but your heart is hardened towards Him and you refuse to come near to Him.

And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

That's just what I've been saying all along, that there is a certain truth, and God reveals it to those who seek Him. That truth is Jesus Christ. You've admitted that God could convince me, so it isn't an inherently irrational position.

All you're telling me is that you are convinced of something, and FWIW, I believe that you are. You have no grounds to believe that your human perceived conviction is warranted, especially given that you know of many other humans who are equally convicted about things that contradict what you believe. That alone should give you doubt about your convictions, as it gives me doubt. If it doesn't give you doubt, you're not being rational. What's more likely: that you alone are correct among all the millions of equally convicted people, or that all equally convicted people, including you, are wrong? What makes you so special?

Nothing makes me special; I simply responded to Gods calling. I can explain why people follow false religion in imitation of the true God, which is that Satan blinds the eyes of unbelievers so that they cannot know the truth about God. He backs up their experiences with supernatural signs and wonders so that they believe they are on the right path. Satan is an imitator of God:

2Co 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
2Co 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
2Co 11:15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

I DO doubt my own existence -- at least, I don't take it as fact that I exist. I could be a brain in a vat, etc. I don't accept my own senses either as categorical evidence. I live as if they're accurate because it's instinctive and it serves me to do so. Skepticism is not ignorance. Accepting something absolutely and uncritically is ignorance. You expect me to accept your word on faith. Why should I believe you? You're just some random person on their internet soapbox who claims to have visions of god. See how stupid it would be for me to change my life because of that? You wouldn't.

I don't think you're actually that skeptical, because I haven't really seen you critically examine your own presuppositions. You say that you don't have any preference for the truth, but that is clearly not true. You are very slanted in favor of a liberal/humanistic/naturalistic mindset, and you oppose any ideas which contradict it. You clearly do accept some things, like evolution for instance, as the gospel truth. This is very inconsistent with your statements about uncertainty. You've seen the human capacity to delude itself, so you keep saying, but you don't seem to question the thought process that leads you to any of these conclusions.

The reason I came to be a Christian, and no one ever witnessed to me by the way, is because I wanted to know the truth and God showed me what it is. I had sufficient evidence from God to give my life to Jesus, and then Jesus completely transformed me and made me a new person. I didn't expect any of that to happen. I had no idea what it would mean to become a Christian. But it did happen, supernaturally, and I found out later that it matched up to everything the bible said would happen. It's one thing to use confirmation bias to make a bunch of coincidence and happenstance into some kind of experience of God. It's another to be transformed at the core of your being into an entirely new person, losing all the negatives and gaining an unlimited supply of peace, joy, hope and love. Even more so when it happens within a moment in time. I've seen miracles, and I've seen things like demon possession. I am certain because God made me certain, but there is plenty of evidence to justify my certainty.

You are certain about God's revelation to you because God has given you certainty of it. That's tautology, if you're a rational agent.

Actually, it's circular reasoning. You will find that every inductive argument suffers from this problem. You cannot actually ultimately justify a single one of your beliefs to me. The conversation could go like this:

You: (objection to a stated fact or belief)
Me: Is that a rational statement?
You: Yes, it is logical.
Me: How do you know it is logical?
You: Because I reason it to be so.
Me: How do you know your reasoning is valid?
You: Because I reason it to be so.

Repeat ad infinitum. You've admitted that you can't trust your senses, and you just assume that you're rational because it's instinctive, which provides you no ultimate justification for anything you believe. That you're telling me it's wrong to use circular reason is absurd since everything you believe is based on it.

Circular reasoning is not necessarily fallacious because you cannot point to an ultimate authority for any claim without using it. Look at the issues this problem of induction causes when it comes to proving scientific theory:

"Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-Landau note that “using the scientific method to judge the scientific method is circular reasoning”. Scientists attempt to discover the laws of nature and to predict what will happen in the future, based on those laws. However, per David Hume's problem of induction, science cannot be proven inductively by empirical evidence, and thus science cannot be proven scientifically. An appeal to a principle of the uniformity of nature would be required to deductively necessitate the continued accuracy of predictions based on laws that have only succeeded in generalizing past observations. But as Bertrand Russell observed, “The method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

You cannot use empirical evidence to prove empiricism is valid, just as you can't use the scientific method to prove the scientific method is valid. Therefore science cannot be proven scientifically! It needs an ultimate justification which cannot be proven inductively. Therefore, you would have to use a deductive argument by presupposing the uniformity of nature to justify the continued accuracy of the predictions of science. But again, just assuming the uniformity in nature leads you to the same problem. The only evidence you have that the future will be like the past is in the past. Therefore it would be fallacious reasoning to say the future will be like the past because of the past.

This is where the problem comes in for the atheist, because he must use viciously circular reasoning, which is always fallacious. I can point to God to justify logic, truth, the uniformity in nature, and my own rationality. These concepts don't make any sense in an atheistic worldview, because there is no way to justify them. My reasoning isn't viciously circular..I can point to an ultimate authority. Your reason is viciously circular because you must point to yourself as the authority.

You want God to be real so you deny all evidence even to other *possibilities*, let alone facts.

I didn't originally go looking for God. He tapped me on the shoulder. I didn't become a Christian because I wanted God to be real, I became a Christian because the evidence indicated He is real.

I don't want anything in particular to be real. I only want to be as sure as possible of what I do believe.

I don't think you want the Christian God to be real, and would prefer that He wasn't. What you can be sure of is that you cannot ultimately justify any of your beliefs.

Yes, of course a god could convince you, but just because you're convinced, doesn't mean it was God who did it. That would be a faulty syllogism. Minds can play the most amazing tricks on people. That's documented fact.

How is it that when you have evidence that confirms your belief, it's faulty, but when you reject that evidence, it's rational? Just because you can potentially falsify an idea doesn't mean it has been falsified. I have a path to the truth, as you've admitted. God could make me certain, and He could reveal truth, so it isn't irrational to believe it, considering the overwhelming evidence that I have received, and continue to receive, each and every day. When God touches your life, you have a justified true belief in Him. In every case, when God makes someone certain, they are going to justified in saying that they're certain. You would say all these people are delusional, but you have no way to be able to tell the difference. Only the individual could really know that they've been touched by God. The only way you could find out is if you were yourself touched by God. That's what I've been trying to tell you all along. I can't convince you, but God can. He loves you and He is waiting for you to soften your heart and seek His face. That is the only thing which will prove or disprove my claim.


>> ^messenger:

stuff

As Richard Dawkins once put it:
“Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite ... If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sum right.”

As prof. Cox touched on, we don't just need people at college/university, but we need a public that understands the scientific method and thinking. I mean forget higher education for a bit, what we need, is middle school and hell, kindergardens, that teach kids HOW to think, not what to think. You dont need everyone to know the mass of the Higgs or what the Golgi apparatus does, what you need is for everyone to understand what kind of thinking that led to discover such facts, we need humans trained in the art of critical thinking, people with stimulates the brain. If kids have learned nothing else in school by the age of 15, at least they should have learned critical thinking.

>> ^alcom:

@Sagemind: The validity of his Roberts' talk comes from the fact that the cumulative effects of human activities have a self-perpetuating momentum based on things like the methane contained in permafrost. The simple argument that we simply cannot afford to be wrong far outweighs the idea that his entire thesis must be thrown out because of a handful of appeals to popularity or "hearsay" evidence. This is not a court, or even a peer-reviewed research paper.
Ice cores reveal he annual accumulation of snow in the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica contains isotopic markers of the temperature, so there are indeed scientific methods of measuring prehistoric temperatures.


Well said Alcom.

Sagemind, If you would take advice from a fellow skeptic, we do have temperature reconstructions going back more than 100 years. The instrumental record, from actual direct human measurement of temperature goes back just over 100 years, to around the late 1800's. That record graphs a rather consistent and linear warming trend from start to finish. More over, it records an increase of exactly the degree the speaker in the video mentions.

There is a trick to all this though. The temperature record going back more than about 100 years is measured with an entirely different methodology. It shows, again, as the speaker mentioned temperatures over the last few thousand years that has not varied very much.

There are people like the speaker who then put those 2 pieces together to declare proof positive that unprecedented warming began 100 years ago, right when man started burning fossil fuels. As I said, I'm skeptical myself. The other significant thing about 100 years ago is the change of methodology for building the graph and reconstruction of temperature. With 1 method, we have a fairly static graph, with another method we immediately have another. Any scientist worthy of the name would look at that and say the same, and investigate ways to rule out the methodology as the cause of the different results.

That's why I insisted on directing people to google scholar and looking at Mann's own work. He's the one that came out with the famous hockey stick graph that 'proved' man-made warming. All of his follow up work is showing more and more evidence that reconstructing the last 100 years with same methodology used to construct the last few thousand shows a much less scary picture.

But don't take my word for it. Don't take the speaker in the video's word for it. Don't even take Mann's word for it. Go look at the raw results in his article's and the other available related scientific literature. I promise I have and come back convinced it is looking like a good portion of the gloom and doom is merely an artifact of methodology change over at the same time as man started burning up fossil fuels.