Michael Ruse, like me, is (1) a philosopher, (2) a Darwinist, (3) an atheist, and (4) a respecter of religion. Militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel D…

Michael Ruse and Daniel Dennett are philosophers. Both are Darwinists and both are atheists. But there 

This had me in stitches. Apparently Darwinian philosopher Daniel Dennett (who’s out and about promoting his new book) has fallen out with fellow Darwinian, British-Born philosopher Michael Ruse. Ruse warns against taking evolutionary theory too far, s…

Here. Ruse to Dennett: “I thought your new book is really bad and not worthy of you . . . .” Via Keith Burgess-Jack…

1) the reason why phd students prefer not to use common sense is because its been wrong… dangerously wrong… in the past. Slavery, the extermination of jews, burning witches, etc… were all seen as common sense in our history. People in academia are desperately concerned about supporting the slavery, extermination of jews, or burning of witches, of our time… evil things that we just don’t realize yet. Even though common sense is so often right… the only way to avoid the infrequent, disasterous results of common sense, is to be skeptical, and not rely on common sense in our deeper thinking.
Is this a good strategy? I don’t know, but I really, really, don’t want to support something like slavery, and logical/critical thinking is the most consistent strategy for avoiding those pitfalls.

2) Scientists see the equation: 1+1=2 and believe that the most important feature is the “+” because it describes the process… the pure logic that will be true in every case.
Normal people see the equation: 1+1=2 and believe that the most important features are the “1″s and “2″, because they are the objects… the pure logic that will be true in every case.
To scientists… the process is the important thing: whenever you see a “+” it will function in a certain way. Normal people are more concerned about the objects… two “1″s is the same as a “2″.
This is the main controversy in the ID / evolution debate. Scientists see evolution as a “process”… whenever anything replicates, randomly mutates, and is weeded in some way or another… you will always have evolution/adaptation. That’s what the scientist sees and believes.
The normal person sees the living world as an “object”… lots of “2″s that have been created in some way. To them, only evidence of lots of “1″s will be compelling evidence… in this case… the “1″s are transitional species, the creation of complex cells from simple chemicals, etc.
This explains why evolution is so OBVIOUS to scientists… it’s as obvious as “1+1=2″.
This also explains why ID is so OBVIOUS to normal people… it’s as obvious as “1+1=2″.

This doesn’t tell us which is right… but maybe it will help us understand each other a little better.

3) Also… I think we each define religion and science differently. Scientists loosely define religion, as believing in god and the body of organized “common sense” beliefs that explain our world. Scientists loosely define science as the “process” for finding out confirmable information about our world.
Religionists loosely define science as “blind materialism”, science won’t even consider any explanation that doesn’t begin with materialist foundations…. so how can the conclusions possibly be unbiased if its biased to begin with? Religionists loosely define religion as the body of knowledge of our world. There’s a story that in the garden or eden, there were two trees… the tree of life,and the tree of knowledge. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, but not the tree of life. In this sense, religion is the embodiment of the “tree of knowledge”… and is the nutrition for us… human beings / souls.. who are a part of the continuing tree of life.

4) For what its worth… I’m a scientist. I have a strong religious identity. I’ve become convinced that Dennett is correct. This ongoing conversation has enriched my access to our “Tree of knowledge”… and maybe brings us a little closer to understanding our roots in Eden.