Jeremy England could change the way we think about evolution | Hacker News Reader

Jeremy England could change the way we think about evolution

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19 pointswasi001319 comments

Click-bait title and framing. Article on someone interested in the definition of life and questions about how life begins/began is interesting but isn't about one-upping Darwin in any sense. I would hate to be in England's shoes where just being an intensely curious researcher gets journalists to prophesize about you getting acknowledged as better than Darwin or whatever. What a bunch of distraction to have to be humble and downplay that or to defend the audacity etc. I bet lots of people will find it hard to avoid some bias against England just to spite the careless and unjustified way the journalist writes about him.

The article pushed "Look! He is a Jew! and a scientist! its so incredible! Sneakers!" way to hard.

I've come to loath articles that stretch out a mildly interesting news and bio into a long narrative that muddies the interesting part.

Side note,

> Christianity and Darwinism are generally opposed

That's not fair to Christianity. For example, the largest Christian group, the Catholic church, is in no way opposed to Darwinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution

As a committed atheist, I find people who try and create antagonism between science and religion to be lazy.

If you're religious, and you think science squeezes out God, you're just putting limitations on your all-powerful God by suggesting he's constrained by the world He created.

If you're a scientist, you're missing the starting point that God's the guy who (allegedly) programmed this world and so he's free to fudge whatever he likes, and apparently so far he likes to simulate a measurable ruleset — he's like a False on a proof tree, you can stick whatever you like under it.

I agree with everything you said. Curious, why are you a committed atheist?

Perhaps the question shouldn't be whether one believes God exists or not but whether one thinks he is necessary to explain the world we see. I personally don't believe in God, because I don't see the need for God to make sense of the world. Also I don't really get why people mean by God, as he/she/it is typically explained and defined in extremely vague terms to the point of being utterly useless to a person with inclinations towards science and logic.

I would be very interested to hear how a man like England would have defined or explained God.

> Perhaps the question shouldn't be whether one believes God exists or not but whether one thinks he is necessary to explain the world we see.

It's definitely a good question, but I don't think it's as important of a question, because whether we think it's necessary for God to exist doesn't have any bearing on whether God exists. If God exists, it is so regardless of what we think.

Humans are finite, one might say "very finite" on the universal scale, so I don't think it makes sense to expect humans to be able to even answer such a question authoritatively. We get so many things wrong, and looking at human history, humans have been getting things wrong for a long time. Now we have science and computers and space programs, but on the universal scale, I think we haven't begun to scratch the surface--and if that is so, how could we even begin to answer the question of whether it's necessary for God to exist?

And there's always the question of what caused the universe to exist: whether one believes it was a Big Bang or anything else, what caused that event? How can we say whether it is necessary for God to exist to have caused it? What if "God" is simply whatever caused the universe to come into existence? One may not believe that the universe was created by God, but that leaves the question of the universe's origin unanswered; and having no answer for that question, it seems unreasonable to rule out the existence of God.

Committed may be the wrong word. I simply do not believe in God, and I do not feel I have any reason to believe in God, especially as God is -- by any usual definition -- super natural. I used to be pretty heavily religious as a kid, but just fell out of it over time.

I appreciate your response. I have a couple of other questions, if you are willing.

> I do not feel I have any reason to believe in God, especially as God is -- by any usual definition -- super natural.

Why do you rule out the possibility of a supernatural entity? How do you define supernatural, considering that what seems supernatural to humans has changed throughout history?

> I used to be pretty heavily religious as a kid, but just fell out of it over time.

May I ask, what did you used to believe then, about God, religion, etc?

    > Why do you rule out the possibility
    > of a supernatural entity?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

    > How do you define supernatural

Unconstrained by laws of nature

    > considering that what seems supernatural
    > to humans has changed throughout history?

God -- as understood in the vast majority of cases -- is omnipotent. This requires no constraint by the laws of nature. That humans now understand how things work that they previously thought were supernatural doesn't help at all with any discussion of something that's by definition supernatural.

    > what did you used to believe then

Christadelphian.

I don't understand how Russell's Teapot rules out the possibility of a supernatural entity. It seems to mean that the fact that something's existence cannot be disproven does not prove its existence. It does not mean that only things which are proven to exist actually exist.

Now Russell may have advocated belief in only things which may be scientifically proven, but that argument itself bears a burden of proof. What if there exist things which cannot be proven scientifically? Science is a process invented and carried out by humans, who are finite and fallible--therefore science is as well. By one definition of "god," believing only in science effectively makes science one's god.

> Unconstrained by laws of nature

I agree with that definition.

> God -- as understood in the vast majority of cases -- is omnipotent. This requires no constraint by the laws of nature. That humans now understand how things work that they previously thought were supernatural doesn't help at all with any discussion of something that's by definition supernatural.

I mostly agree with you. My thought is this: phenomena exist which humans used to think were inexplicable, but later were discovered to have logical, reasonable explanations. Today a person might consider the concept of God and think, "That's supernatural and inexplicable, therefore it must not exist." But what if the logical, reasonable explanation is that it is supernatural: that it exists outside of our universe and is therefore unbound by its laws?

In other words, we're back to the fundamental question: why do you rule out the possibility of a supernatural entity? If your answer is because of the lack of scientific proof, then why do you only believe in that which may be scientifically proven? According to whom is science the sole determination of what exists?

Thanks for your thoughtful responses.

    > Russell's Teapot [doesn't] rule
    > out the possibility of a
    > supernatural entity

You're right, it doesn't. Why don't we say that what it says is -- to paraphrase the Wikipedia article I sent you -- that "without [proof] he could not expect anyone to believe".

I don't rule out the possibility of a supernatural entity. But I don't have any proof for one or even anything that suggests to me that one is likely, and therefore the simplest explanation is that there are no Gods.

    > What if there exist things which
    > cannot be proven scientifically?

Then for the most part, they're supernatural. I assume it's possible to come up with philosophical outliers or things that are (for now) considered to be impractical to measure.

    > Science is a process invented and
    > carried out by humans, who are
    > finite and fallible--therefore science
    > is as well.

Is arithmetic fallible, too?

    > But what if the logical, reasonable
    > explanation is that it is supernatural:
    > that it exists outside of our universe
    > and is therefore unbound by its laws?

This is rephrasing my original comment starting with "If you're a scientist", so I agree!

    > why do you rule out the possibility of
    > a supernatural entity

I don't. As per a previous comment: "I simply do not believe in God, and I do not feel I have any reason to believe in God"

Ok, thanks for your responses, I appreciate it.

Final question I suppose: since there is no answer for the question of the origin of the universe, why do you not consider that possible evidence for a supernatural entity?

Ironically this loops back to an earlier question of yours: virtually everything humans have ascribed to supernatural causes when there was no better answer has turned out to have natural causes. It's simpler to assume this will be the same.

I came here to say more or less this. It's basically modern Evangelical (as opposed to poat-modern) and fundamentalist Christianity that takes issue with Darwin.

In the US those are, for better or worse, the loudest voices.

It's a huge historical irony to find Catholic Church on right side of any scientific issue.

Doesn't seem very ironic for an institution that, whatever you think of it, has been a prominent supporter and driver of science ever since the days when it was known as "natural philosophy".

Yes. The article was sufficiently terrible that I don't know anything about it. The journo was generally wrong and the article was about a researcher rather than research. I know there's something there that I want to know, but unfortunately I still don't know what it is.

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