Skip to main content

An historical survey of incorrect ( and perhaps defective) science in the service of atheism

Has science been invoked in an unsound manner in the past in order to beat theism or go against theistic morals and ontology? It would be good to make an historical survey and then relate it to modern day fads.
Some of Freud's claims qualify: the Oedipus complex, for example, is not common to all cultures.
The best example might be the steady state theory, which asserted that matter comes into existence out of nowhere in order to avoid admitting that the universe has a beginning. The positing of the multiverse seems to be motivated by the same reluctance to grant that divine providence is evidenced by the fine tuning of our universe.
Margaret Mead's weak but well publicized work in .... Samoa? might be another good example.
Perhaps the Miller-Yuri experiment?


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others.  But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and  may eventually go out of existence.  The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual.  The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being.  In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....