In The Science Delusion, biochemist Rupert Sheldrake lays out what he calls the 'dogma of science'. I thought it might be fun to post them and see what you all think of them!

1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots”, in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activity of brains.

3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the Universe suddenly appeared).

4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.

5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not ‘out there’, where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Konnichi-wa, Myers dono! So what's up with your dogma? Your dog die? Or his ma?

SimonAndal: Konnichi-wa, Myers dono! So what's up with your dogma? Your dog die? Or his ma?

mkmyers45:

These are scientific premises. Although scientists can be a somewhat dogmatic in their reluctance to consider and evaluate non-physical, non-testable and therefore non-verifiable phenomena,Scientific precepts can hardly be regarded as dogma because these can be amended or abandoned alltogether when new evidence is presented and verified.

plaetton:

These are scientific premises. Although scientists can be a somewhat dogmatic in their reluctance to consider and evaluate non-physical, non-testable and therefore non-verifiable phenomena,Scientific precepts can hardly be regarded as dogma because these can be amended or abandoned alltogether when new evidence is presented and verified.

typical.
Always ready with explanations and excuses.

truthislight:
typical.
Always ready with explanations and excuses.

I would expect you to say that I'm wrong and then show how.
Won't you?

plaetton:

I would expect you to say that I'm wrong and then show how.
Won't you?

Nope.
you ant wrong, you simply stated the facts.
Its just my simple summation that for something as seriouse as this, something as import as ones life, what one can stick his life on, one should not simply treat with such a passive explanation.

Should it not demand more scrutiny?
What do you think?
I think it deserved more than the way you just explained it off as though all the time it should be a debate that one wants to score points.

It cant and should not be Cursory all the time.
I constantly evaluate my stand.

plaetton:

I would expect you to say that I'm wrong and then show how.
Won't you?

except of course you atheists do not hold yourselves up to the same standard.

truthislight:
Nope.
you ant wrong, you simply stated the facts.
Its just my simple summation that for something as seriouse as this, something as import as ones life, what one can stick his life on, one should not simply treat with such a passive explanation.

Should it not demand more scrutiny?
What do you think?
I think it deserved more than the way you just explained it off as though all the time it should be a debate that one wants to score points.

It cant and should not be Cursory all the time.
I constantly evaluate my stand.

ok. Thanks for the suggestion

davidylan:

except of course you atheists do not hold yourselves up to the same standard.

He he he. We are not perfect.
We are not a homogenous group.
We come with our individual idiosyncracies.

plaetton:

He he he. We are not perfect.
We are not a homogenous group.
We come with our individual idiosyncracies.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just highlighting the glaring hypocrisy in your post.

davidylan:

I'm not disagreeing with you, just highlighting the glaring hypocrisy in your post.

Hypocrisy?
Which post and how?

I gave my opinion on an issue and truthisight responded by saying "typical........" without explaining what I could have said wrong.
I simply reminded him to offer fair criticism of my post if he disagreed.
I took his subsequent reply in good faith.

I really dont know where the hypocrisy came in.

davidylan:

I'm not disagreeing with you, just highlighting the glaring hypocrisy in your post.

brooo! Lol
we all deserve a pat on the back every now and then.

I think plaeton came round quite nicely.
Lets free him.
Peace

plaetton:

Hypocrisy?
Which post and how?

I gave my opinion on an issue and truthisight responded by saying "typical........" without explaining what I could have said wrong.
I simply reminded him to offer fair criticism of my post if he disagreed.
I took his subsequent reply in good faith.

I really dont know where the hypocrisy came in.

Except of course you are not obliged to do the same no?

davidylan:

Except of course you are not obliged to do the same no?

I get banned for trolling when this guy is left alone? Where is justice? There is no God

MacDaddy01:


I get banned for trolling when this guy is left alone? Where is justice? There is no God

i dont think you understand the meaning of the word "trolling". Get a dictionary.

\

davidylan:

i dont think you understand the meaning of the word "trolling". Get a dictionary.

Epic Fail.


"trolling" doesnt appear in most dictionaries because it is an internet meme actually

MacDaddy01: \

Epic Fail.


"trolling" doesnt appear in most dictionaries because it is an internet meme actually

perhaps you should try the miriam-webster dictionary. Perhaps you think it does not appear in "most" dictionaries simply because you're too lazy to check... the best you can do is google which is inadequate since most dictionaries do not have an online presence.

davidylan:

perhaps you should try the miriam-webster dictionary. Perhaps you think it does not appear in "most" dictionaries simply because you're too lazy to check... the best you can do is google which is inadequate since most dictionaries do not have an online presence.

"Most" and "all" are quite different but I digress. you're a douche

MacDaddy01:


"Most" and "all" are quite different but I digress. you're a douche

you seem confused. If "most" doesnt mean "all" then why the "epic fail" comment when i asked you to check the dictionary?

davidylan:

you seem confused. If "most" doesnt mean "all" then why the "epic fail" comment when i asked you to check the dictionary?

Because you assumed that it is dictionaries but very unlikely to be in most dictionaries

MacDaddy01:

Because you assumed that it is dictionaries but very unlikely to be in most dictionaries

Sigh. Certainly you have a small cranial capacity.

That the word is "unlikely" to be in most dictionaries (a clearly false claim since you dont know besides what google tells you) does not mean it is not in at least 1. What again was your point?

Who will save Nairaland from the BigMac Daddy syndrome trolling us with ante-diluvian illogic? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

I think those 'dogma' are correct.
For instance,
All biological inheritance is material, carried in
the genetic material, DNA, and in other material
structures.
If you have any verifiable evidence contradicting the above, then by all means, it will be modified or discarded.
Very dog-ma-tic, I suppose.

davidylan:

Sigh. Certainly you have a small cranial capacity.

That the word is "unlikely" to be in most dictionaries (a clearly false claim since you dont know besides what google tells you) does not mean it is not in at least 1. What again was your point?

I have an oxford and a cambridge dictionary of 2005 and 2009 respectively that dont have "trolling" as a word.

So shut up

MacDaddy01:

I have an oxford and a cambridge dictionary of 2005 and 2009 respectively that dont have "trolling" as a word.

So shut up

perhaps you should update them no? You truly are dumb.

mkmyers45: In The Science Delusion, biochemist Rupert Sheldrake lays out what he calls the 'dogma of science'. I thought it might be fun to post them and see what you all think of them!

1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots”, in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

Well, no. This is not any kind of dogma of modern science at all.

2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activity of brains.

Usually one goes with the simplest explanation until evidence for a more complex explanation is provided.

3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the Universe suddenly appeared).

Whether there is conservation of energy over the entire universe is not clear or some kind of dogma.

4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.

Actually, it's believed that forces (electromagnetic, strong, etc.) diverged from an original force and then diverged some more after that. Meaning that the forces at work were different from what obtains now.

5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

If a mutation increases the biological fitness of an organism, that is evolution. Increasing the fitness of an organism is definitely a goal/direction.

6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

And what else would "biological inheritance" be carried in?

7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not ‘out there’, where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

?

What does this even mean? Is there supposed to be some sort of projection of the image of the tree that you see out in the real world?

8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

I'm not sure this is "dogma." It's more like logic. But there are dissenting voices:

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

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

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

9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

Has telepathy ever been conclusively demonstrated/proven to have occurred?

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Sometimes a medical treatment is effective before people really understand the exact mechanism behind why it works. Any medicine that has some positive effect, no matter how slight, has a reason that it works. Even supposedly "non-mechanistic" medicines that show some positive effects could eventually be explained mechanism by mechanism down to the final effect.

Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

PhysicsQED: If a mutation increases the biological fitness of an organism, that is evolution. Increasing the fitness of an organism is definitely a goal/direction.

Well, yes nature is purposeless; we may want to attribute a purpose to it to link it with an 'intelligent' designer. Evolution is simply about 'what works, survives' full stop. So indirectly, it has a goal to increase the fitness and therefore survival of an organism. But it doesn't 'set' out with any purpose. There is no goal or direction. 99.9 percent of all the species that ever existed are now extinct so where they survived in one era, they were not well equipped in some other. That demonstrates the lack of any direct purpose or design in nature or evolution. It is simply about the survival of the fittest at each point in time.

davidylan:

Except of course you are not obliged to do the same no?

I always try my utmost to offer fair criticism.

comnsense:

Well, yes nature is purposeless; we may want to attribute a purpose to it to link it with an 'intelligent' designer. Evolution is simply about 'what works, survives' full stop. So indirectly, it has a goal to increase the fitness and therefore survival of an organism. But it doesn't 'set' out with any purpose. There is no goal or direction. 99.9 percent of all the species that ever existed are now extinct so where they survived in one era, they were not well equipped in some other. That demonstrates the lack of any direct purpose or design in nature or evolution. It is simply about the survival of the fittest at each point in time.

It's like asking what's the sun's purpose in shining. It doesn't have one, likely because it's inanimate. Don't know why people have trouble with this (perhaps we could get them to fly there on a faith powered rocket to ask the sun its purpose).

If someone wishes to call the scientific method dogmatic well...

wiegraf:

It's like asking what's the sun's purpose in shining. It doesn't have one, likely because it's inanimate. Don't know why people have trouble with this (perhaps we could get them to fly there on a faith powered rocket to ask the sun its purpose).

If someone wishes to call the scientific method dogmatic well...

Indeed my friend, people cant seem to get away from the 'purpose' thing. That's why a lot of people equate evolution with pure chance and say the beauty in nature could not have come from pure chance. Well evolution may be purposeless but it is natural engineering at work and therefore it is not simply pure chance. Anyway, its for folk to go read up on it.

Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots”, in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activity of brains.

3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big slam, when all the matter and energy of the Universe suddenly appeared).

Well, yes science as a discipline and a path to knowledge has to take things apart and study its constituent parts so it makes sense for science to see nature as a machine. Other scientific schools of thought (like some branches of philosophy) still emphasize the point that the whole is more than a sum of its parts and this view is also employed in the utilisation of the products of scientific knowledge. For instance, medicine largely recognises the importance of environment, family and work on a person's general health - and not just drugs. However, it would be problematic reaching knowledge without taking a dispassionate, detached view as science does.

Point 2 is explained by my earlier post on nature being purposeless. So the sum may come to be greater than constituent parts and the activity of the brain producing consciousness in the human but each cell and neuron are themselves purposeless. And human consciousness is no illusion, it is real or I wouldn't be typing this. But yes, it is an activity of the brain.

Point 3, I am no expert in but at some point in the past, something would have had to come from nothing or from something that cannot be created. Some schools point to this something as the zero point energy (potential energy) that was there before the bang.

Finally, all of these are not dogma; they cannot be because they are open to correction and falsification. As Karl Popper said; the value of a scientific theory is in its openness to falsification. If there is no way to falsify it (to test for errors) then it is not scientific and has very little truth value.

comnsense:
Point 3, I am no expert in but at some point in the past, something would have had to come from nothing or from something that cannot be created.

You say this because. . .?

Some schools point to this something as the zero point energy (potential energy) that was there before the bang.

What schools are these? Reference?