Many of us have seen the quote where Einstein said "Science without religion is lame..." but as Benjamin Franklin's autobiography declares him a deist, I was always more familiar with Einstein quotes of doubt. I was able to dig up this website, to articles appearing in Skeptic magazine:

http://www.skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id8.html

To save writing this all out twice I give a link to my article in Hastings Humanists:

http://hastingshumanists.blogspot.com/2010/09/hawking-ditches-god.html

You can't now read the Times on line without paying a fee.

The Guardian has a lot of comment on the same subject.

We are discussing whether / to what extent we have free will, and for this we obviously need a definition.

ROMANSH: The ability to act or to make choices independently of the environment or of the universe.

DAVID: I would fully agree, and if you don’t mind I will use that brief sentence as my definition also.

This definition excludes even the possibility that our actions and choices may be determined by factors within ourselves that are beyond our conscious control.

(It may be too late, but I’ve started this new thread because ‘What exactly IS Intelligence?’ has become somewhat overcrowded.)

http://www.physorg.com/news201939898.html

The universe will definitely end in 'heat death' expanding under the influence of Dark Energy, reported by the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11030889

This means, if confirmed, that the universe is flat. Settles lots of arguments.

I just thought people here might enjoy this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=youtube_gdata

How does agnosticism engage with all this?

I thought the image of future enlightenment - a levitating guru -
was amusing, but probably symptomatic of what is wrong with this thesis.

Had a couple of reports of posts taking a while to submit and possible 'time outs'.

To enable us to get a pattern of when this occurs if you experience any problem could you email admin@webcracker.co.uk with date / time and your actual location ie Texas, USA / Somerset UK. Hopefully the tech team can then work out what the possible problem is.

Thanks in advance,

Neil

Complex symbiosis between parasite and host. This cannot have developed step by step, and I don't believe in a meddling God who steps in and arranges partners for the dance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/18/zombie-carpenter-ant-fungus

Is the epigentic mechanism so complex, the process can be manipulated to this degree? Any suggestions?

Hi All
From time to time I come by and see what's going on at this forum. It appears to be one of just two agnostic forums on the web. I'm a moderator on the other forum.

After playing on this other agnostic forum for three years, one of the conclusions I have come to is that agnostics as a species are an apathetic lot. Anyway there is a move afoot to create an international agnostic organization - Agnostics International (.net) - the tentative launch date is in January.

So I was wondering if it were OK to make a more formal sales pitch and call for volunteers? The eventual aim would be to have individual national organizations.

Anyway I'm a displaced Brummie living in Canada. I look forward to my copy of New Scientist every week, albeit it's always four weeks late.

I apologize if I have broken any forum rules; if so please reprimand me appropriately.

rom

This one's for David:

http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&BrowsingT...

Man, can I predict the future or what????

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/computer-designed-vaccines-confront-new-flu-strains/1...

http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-new-blueprint-for-artificial-general-intelligence

Ironically my response to dhw concerning kurzweil landed me on this article...

Good stuff!!!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/09/nao-robot-develop-display-emotions

Ron Rosenbaum on Slate has published "An Agnostic Manifesto"

http://www.slate.com/id/2258484/pagenum/all/

It has already had a lot of commentary.

It is also on the New Humanist blog with lots of comments:

http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2010/08/is-agnosticism-only-sensible-choice.html

I wonder how far dhw would endorse this Manifesto?

I loved the poem in this piece. AI is a pipe dream, as Penrose wrote in "The Emperor's New Mind".

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/computational-intelligence-and-darwin...

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-scientists-create-most-comprehensive-map-of-the-brains-ne...

I thought this was worth opening a new thread.
It's the same subject we have discussed before
but dhw wants an expert to explain things to us
At the bottom of this site there is a video series
of a lecture by John Maynard Smith at the Royal Institution
which explains a lot of things very simply
so that even I could understand it.

http://humanistheritage.org.uk/articles/john-maynard-smith/

Recommended. Without going into the actual chemical structure
of proteins and bases he explains how the biological code works
and also puts forward a theory about how it could have evolved.

Not only are Republicans and Democrats fighting at arms length, but the N.Y Times has a commentary pointing out the wild harangings coming from so-called science writers against ID'ers and others of that ilk. An interessting read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/magazine/01FOB-medium-t.html?_r=4

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=when-should-a-scientists-data-be-li-...

And pressure mounts...

As I stated briefly in the "Origins: A skeptics..." thread, the off-topic exploration of Dialectical Materialism vs. Idealism in the book serves as the primary motivator to why dhw, David, George, and myself cannot come to any concise agreement.

At this stage of the game, we are simply ignorant of the nature of origins--though we're better off than we were 100 years ago. But in the book Shapiro constantly says that we're in-between paradigms right now--which to me chillingly recreates my long-ago point that the research needs to find a "pidgin chemistry," some combination of bio/organic/inorganic chemistry that simply doesn't exist at this point.

But to stick to the thrust of my thread; the only disagreement we really have is really due to the differing levels of skepticism exercise.

Lets review the present nature of the endeavor:

Thus far, science can create some, but not all of the needed components for life. Life, when pared down as far as we can get it, requires DNA (for information storage) and enzymes (to carry out the functions of the cells.) The present state is a "Chicken and egg" conundrum.

I can say now that I do have a deeper appreciation of the intelligence argument. However, I'm completely in line with Shapiro that invoking a Watchmaker isn't science and cannot be substantiated. The reason for this is because in my epistemology, I only accept what amounts to material evidence as knowledge. But note that it is exactly at this point where we all diverge; at the level of personal frameworks or "memes" as it were.

David argues a 'la Adler; that because we have been unable to create life from scratch, we can conclude at this time that it did not have a spontaneous (as in spontaneous generation) origin--perhaps for no other reason that it required intelligence for man to do it in the first place.

dhw argues more like Shapiro or myself; though I can only guess at his framework for evaluating claims, though it appears quite similar to my own: Caution is key. Only state what we KNOW. The amount of truth that can be attributed to a claim is paramount--and in the case of a creator we can't "KNOW," and we also have no reason to believe in spontaneous generation.

George (Though I have rather limited experience with him here) seems to argue very much like Dawkins. (Religions are debunked purely by the fact that nearly all their claims on the material world have been proven false; so why bother?)

The problem, is that thus far it appears that the only avenue for raw materialism is spontaneous generation. We're just not close enough for anyone to be satisfied. It is more truthful to the actual state to say "I don't know" than to assert (and it is only assertion) atheism or theism.

As we can tell; personal frameworks litter this landscape. So what--should we do to remedy this?