Re: Did Dawkins really claim that god-did-it is a scientific hypothesis?

On 5/30/2025 5:08 AM, Ernest Major wrote:

On 30/05/2025 09:47, Martin Harran wrote:

On Fri, 30 May 2025 08:08:47 +0000, j.nobel.daggett@gmail.com
(LDagget) wrote:
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On Fri, 30 May 2025 4:07:46 +0000, erik simpson wrote:
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On 5/29/25 4:54 PM, RonO wrote:

Dawkins answered kindly that belief in a designer is more than a mere
subjective response: "You appear to be a theist," he told her. "You
appear to believe in some kind of higher power. Now, I think that the
hypothesis of theism is the most exciting scientific hypothesis you
could possibly hold." Hold that thought in your mind.

Struggling through his wikipedia entry, it seems that Dawkins indeed
does support the notion that as a scientific hypothesis, God is
legitimate.  A fair number of physicists would agree. Religious
superstructures such as the Biblical miracles, visions, etc. don't count
as hypotheses.

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Seems to me that the proper perspective is that just about anything
could be a scientific hypothesis if the terms involved were
defined with sufficient precision, and the asserted hypothesis
was in some sense amenable to being objectively tested.
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That's a bit sneaky because defining __god__ has been historically
problematic. Most definitions put limits on the thing being
defined, some sense of where it begins and ends, how to distinguish
what it is and isn't. This seems somehow connected with the odd
categories like omnipresent and omnipotent that some would attempt
to use. It has an air of resisting a definition but for a
hypothesis to be usefully considered scientific that doesn't work.
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If asked to test the "god did it" hypothesis, it seems like we
would need some clarity on the __it__ part and some of those
how, when, and where type questions specified somewhat.
Otherwise, how do you go about testing the hypothesis.
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If you can't test it, it simply can't be a scientific hypothesis.
Philosophers can hedge over distinctions between "can in
principle test" versus "can in practice test". I'd weigh in
on the side of 'not scientific' until you can do it in practice
with an added label of __potentially__ for the not in practice set.

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Is that not moving closer to theory than hypothesis?

  From wiktionary
 "(sciences) A coherent statement or set of ideas that explains observed facts or phenomena and correctly predicts new facts or phenomena not previously observed, or which sets out the laws and principles of something known or observed; a hypothesis confirmed by observation, experiment etc."
 or to make a stab at it myself
 a coherent model explaining diverse observations
 There are exceptions in usage, such as String Theory - I think this is bleed through from mathematical usage. Note that there are people who argue that String Theory is not scientific.
 I think that the concept of a research program is helpful.
 String Theory is a research program which has failed to deliver (other than a body of mathematics).
 Evolutionary psychology is in principle a research program. That evolution has had an influence on human behaviour is a more than plausible hypothesis. But evolutionary psychologists in general lack a necessary scepticism about their supplementary hypothesis, and even the overriding hypothesis is questionable - could not evolution have handed over control of behaviour to the more labile (and therefore more adaptable) culture? The evolution of cultural control of behaviour would invalidate the underpinnings of the research programme. I'm ambivalent on the scientific nature of evolutionary psychology - I don't think that the hypothesis is inherently incapable of providing insights, but much of the practice seems to be in the cargo-cult science zone.
 Intelligent Design could have been a research program, albeit one I would have low expectations of (lower than evolutionary psychology). The movement might even have had expectations of being one, but if it did they failed to put in the work. Intelligent Design is instead a religiously motivated political movement with a strategy of attacking the theory of evolution.
 Some people would exclude the supernatural from the scope of science. I disagree on this point; all science requires is statistical regularity of behaviour, i.e. some degree of predictability.
 So God is not a priori excluded from science. On the other hand to bring God within the scope of science may require concessions that the religious may not wish to make. As a practical matter, as an ignostic I think that God as a concept does not give us enough purchase on which to base a scientific hypothesis.

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Odd thing that some would consider not being a scientific
hypothesis as a challenge to the ultimate truth of their hypothesis.
But that is dubious thinking.

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Those who think that way are usually those who feel their religious
beliefs are challenged by science. That gives them 3 options:
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1) Rethink their religious beliefs to accommodate the science.
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2) Try to argue that their beliefs are actually just another
scientific hypothesis.
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3) Dismiss the science
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ID'ers simply can't face up to option 1 so they go for a mixture of
options 2 and 3.
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God is not excluded from science if god is part of nature.  IDiotic creationists claim that their god exists outside of our universe and is not subject to our natural laws, but can dip it's finger into our existence once in a while to do things.
Behe has claimed that his designer would be responsible for getting 3 neutral mutations to occur within a certain period of time in some existing lineage of life, and that those 3 neutral mutations would have to result in some function that each one could not contribute to the new function without the other.
This is likely a testable claim, but Behe has never tried to verify any such 3 neutral mutations in any of his 3 IC systems (flagellum, blood clotting and adaptive immune system).  He has pointed out that it is possible to identify such neutral evolution because example of 2 neutral mutations have been documented for the evolution of steroid hormone receptors (Thornton's group research that Behe claimed was on the Edge of evolution)  Behe claimed two could happen in nature, but 3 could not.   The thing that makes this an unscientific hypothesis is that Behe never wanted to test it on his IC systems.  He and Minnich had admitted that they never bothered to do the "scientific" testing of IC that they claimed could be done, and they never attempted it after claiming that it was possible.
The reason for just making the claim is likely due to the fact that if he failed it would be a loss for his IC claims, and if he succeeded the vast majority of support for the ID scam comes from YEC, and they would go into denial of any designer that did things over half a billion years ago during the evolution of things like the adaptive immune or blood clotting system that evolved in vertebrates during the Cambrian explosion.  Not only would success be a failure for the ID creationist scam Big Tent, but it would not demonstrate designer design, because Behe hasn't figured out any way to differentiate designer did it neutral mutations from everyday occurring neutral mutations.  It is just bad science even if the hypothesis might be tested, it really isn't a scientific hypothesis.
If some god is a part of nature it might be detectable.  Ken Miller put out the idea that the Christian God might do things by jiggling atoms, but he didn't know how to detect the jiggling, and how it would be different from natural behavior of the atoms, so it isn't a scientific hypothesis.  Even Tour admits that he doesn't know how to do any ID creation science.  Tour is just into gap denial as his only means of having any hope for any type of designer to exist.
I have a pretty broad definition of science.  Science is just what scientists do in order to understand nature.  This would include the ID perps if any of them were really interested in learning something new about nature, but YEC ID perps like Nelson never wanted the ID perps to succeed in accomplishing any valid ID science.  Nelson only joined up for the ID Perp's Wedge religious and political mission because he knew that no ID science actually existed, and he stayed on and supported the bait and switch scam because it was the only way forward for the Wedge strategy.  If Behe really had, had any real science to support some god diddle farting around with the bacterial flagellum over a billion years ago, Nelson would have never joined to support the Wedge.  The other ID perps never wanted to accomplish any real ID science because they would lose their monetary support and largest portion of their political support.  Science is just the study of nature, and nature is not Biblical, and legitimate ID science would tell creationists that nature is not Biblical.
There can be very bad science like ID/creation science that is science so bad that most scientists do not consider them to be scientific efforts, but even really bad science can result in learning something new about nature, but creationists like the Scientific creationists and ID perps never wanted to learn anything new about nature because of what is already known.  The Top Six gap denial arguments put out in the order in which they must have occurred in this universe killed ID on TO because nearly all the IDiots never wanted the ID perps to succeed in filling any of those gaps.  The god that fills the Top Six gaps is not the god described in the Bible.
Ron Okimoto