Creationists/theists and the discontinuous mind
I just posted this at Rational Skeptics:-
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/po...7.html#p259227
Richard Dawkins, in "Gaps in the MInd" [Chapter 1.3] in "A Devil's Chaplin" (2003:21) talks about Creationists and their "discontinuous minds". While it is true that all humans love to categorize and pigeon-hole stuff, the creationist mind makes this an art form, by assuming that are categories always reflect nature, and that nature, should have discontinuities.
Creationists love to tout on about discontinuities, because it is there [they allege] that god resides. Thus, if species are immutable, then they must be created by fiat of god. The species [to them] has Platonic perfection and rigidity. Not for them is the concept of the Dynamic species.
R.L. Mayden, in "
A Hierarchy of Species concepts: the denouement in the Saga of the Species Problem" (1997
p. 380-424) lists that there are at least 22 concepts of species. Frankly, I am surprised that there should be such gnashing of gums over this, or indeed, that at a fundamental level, the elusiveness of the species concept is a problem at all. Of course, there are practical and proximate problems with not having total agreement in species concepts for taxonomic reasons. But really, this "fuzziness" in the species concept is exactly what we should expect from a natural system. Only god-created systems have mysterious discontinuities.
We see the same problem when we try to construct a definition of life. The boundary of life seems fuzzy to the naturalist, but distinct to the god-botherer. Even those religious people that accept evolution, still deny its deeper implications by saying that :"OK, evolution made man, but god injects the soul". Again, the discontinuity of thinking. The denial that complexity and organization can emergently arise out of simpler inputs. Man may be an animal, they say, but man is a discontinuous animal that has received the breath of soul from god. This is vitalism by stealth.
And what the sexes?. There are only males and females, according to the discontinuists. They apparently have not heard of intersex babies, nor hermaphrodites, and even if they have, the word "abomination" is never far away. Let's face it, not many of the religious think that gayness is normal.
Even in the laws of physics, there is inappropriate dismay in some quarters, that the laws of physics break down in singularities like black holes. But again, this is of no surprise to those of us who expect nature to be emergent, rather than designed by supernatural fiat. Sure, it is nice to be able to have a physics for all seasons, and I don't blame [and even admire] those who are after proximate answers to these problems. But the ultimate cause, for the naturalist, must be continuous and natural, and emergent "without" supernatural cause. Supernatural causation is non-parsimonious. Gods create more anomalies than they explain-far more, to the point of infinite regress.
The macro world is emergent from the indeterminism of quantum non-locality, so again, why must some leap to the god hypothesis? On the contrary, the continuous mind knows this as naturally emergent complexity, of order arising from chaos, and information from noise. The discontinuous and religious mind finds QM to be a good "god-of-the-gaps" argument. Again, an anal rigidity of Platonic thought. Just as natural selection acts on genetic variation, so the logic of a working cosmos selects from quantum variation. [Or Guth's inflationary universe, take your pick [for now!].
So what if there are "brute facts" with no ultimate cause? So what if the universe's total energy is ZERO. The ultimate free lunch, so what is wrong with that? Nothing, if you have a continuous mind. it is only the non-continuous mind, that looks for, and sees, the mirage of the miracle.
7th June 2010, 06:51 PM
Creationists/theists and the discontinuous mind
Hybrid Mode
