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科学:漏风的象牙塔

Posted: 2006-11-26 21:29
by Jun
(这个题目有点不对劲,一时想不起更好的。)
,“肖氏反射弧”理论,在国际上有获奖证书,国内有鉴定结论和获奖证书,国内教科书亦曾引用其理论,原告的“肖氏反射弧”理论是客观存在的。
关于方舟子诽谤民事诉讼的消息里有一条让我想了半天,就是肖传国的"反射弧理论"是否科学。法院判决认为既然有国内和国外的认证和获奖证书,那么它是"客观存在的",客观存在的也包括星象学,花牌算命,上帝造人,地球中心论,等等各种理论和说法,那么怎样判断一种说法离事实(真理?)的相对远近?我想了半天,得出的结论是竟然没有一条可靠的标准。

人对真理的认识在至今范围内的局限是肯定的,今天认为是对的东西,或许明天就被新证据推翻,科学方法和系统尤其承认和强调理论建立在事实和证据上。所以,科学家普遍接受的某某理论,从来都不是绝对正确的,只能说支持它的证据越多,考验的时间越长,这个理论越接近真理(例如热力学三定率,进化论,牛顿力学在低速大物体环境下,广义相对论)。但是一个尚未有定论的科学理论,例如String Theory,你可以说它合乎逻辑,而且大学里的物理系都在算它研究它,世界上大概超过一半的物理学家认为它是科学的,很有可能是真的,但是在没有证据支持之前,谁也说不上它到底离真理有多远。在科学里面有争议的话题多了去了,有些是早被否定的胡搅蛮缠,有些是货真价实的证据不足,不搞专业科学的人的确很难判断哪种说法有道理,哪种是胡说八道。(靠法院来裁决学术争执当然是无厘头。)

科学家也是人,他也有科学之外的原因支持不科学的说法和理论,但在外人看来,连科学家内部都没有统一口径的东西,那一定是有漏洞的,对科学界不太熟悉的人民群众很容易被头衔和学历吓住,以为受过科学的教育在科学界工作,说的话就是科学的。且不管科学家这个标签本身就十分含糊,不可靠,保证不了任何东西。最近美国国家健康研究院(National Institute of Health)里面主管人类全基因计划(Human Genome Project)的头头Francis Collins还出版一本书讲他自己的观点--基督教跟科学不冲突,生物学和进化论的大量证据如何坚定了他对上帝的信仰。就是说,认定说话的是否大牌科学家,支持理论的是否权威科学机构或学会,也不太可靠。

科学在社会里面的角色和位置,人们有许多误解,尤其是搞科学的内部人士,以为科学是一尘不然或者高于社会其他成分的象牙塔,肩负教育民众,提高生活水平,引导人类攀高峰的光明大道。其实,科学是社会的一部分,跟其他方面有千丝万缕的联系,一样是社会和人性的一部分,一样带有局限和偏颇的地方,科学并不孤立存在。我老早就讲:医学只是医学,治不了社会本身的毛病。其实科学一样,只是科学家和多数其他人对科学有过高的期望。今天看到一篇华盛顿时报的报道:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00789.html

简单转述一下:最近一部纪录片An Inconvenient Truth,讲的是因为大量使用燃烧石油而加剧温室效应的危险,摆出很多合乎逻辑的证据,指出大多数研究气候变化的科学家都早已接受石油能源造成温室效应的理论,呼吁赶快在世界总动员减少石油能源云云。且不说石油能源的使用是否真的在把世界推向严重后果,但是这个讨论早已经不是纯科学研究而是一个政治和经济的冲突。报道中揭露,此片的制片商给美国全国科学教师协会(National Science Teachers Association)免费提供五万张DVD在学校放映给学生看,被NSTA一口拒绝了,理由是接受这些DVD就等于支持某种政治宣传立场,收了这部片子,其他有目的的组织也会要求给学生看他们的宣传材料等等。有道理吧?事实上,NSTA这个非营利组织的资金来源之一是石油公司Exxon Mobil,Exxon Mobil从他们的九牛利润里拔一根毫毛送给NSTA支持建立科学教育活动,并且在NSTA的advisory board上占一席之地。吃人嘴短,拿人手短的道理,四海皆然。实际上,这种民间组织多的是,给钱的恩主经常是各有各的算盘。政府机构和学校,研究院等等,都跟special interest有千丝万缕的联系,最根本的一条就是钱,财源。虽然是间接的关系,但是对一切定论和一切雪白公正的说法保持一点怀疑的态度,还是比较有用的。

Posted: 2006-11-26 22:33
by 森林的火焰
Richard Dawkins评论Francis Collins的新作:It's perfect politics, but it's not science.
那个法院判决的话组织得很奇怪:客观存在是因为获奖么?不获奖就不是客观存在了?存在和正确,判决都没分清楚。当然那份判决本身就是有目的的奇文,从里边挑逻辑漏洞是闲得慌。

Posted: 2006-11-27 9:50
by silkworm
前一阵TIME杂志有一篇Richard Dawkins vs Francis Collins的对话采访。
Richard Dawkins一拳一拳打在Francis Collins的棉花团上。
看得我真憋气呀。再次感觉到,这种争论永远不能指向真理。

你们要看么?
我有订阅,可以转过来。

Posted: 2006-11-27 9:56
by Jun
Yes, please. Could be amusing.

I've seen both of them promoting their books, separately not together.

Collins is a very effective 棉花团. Perhaps that's why he's the director of HGP. He seems extremely good at politics and political talks. "Why can't we all get along?" He presents this image of naivete and harmlessness that is deceptively charming. Probably an effective management person. Leadership, like, you know...

Not that I think being a blowhard atheist is superior to a smooth-talking charming business leader...

Posted: 2006-11-27 9:58
by silkworm
Jun wrote: "Why can't we all get along?"
没错没错,而且几乎是使用Shrek 2里面那只猫的造型,眨着水汪汪无辜的大眼睛说。 :vomit:

Posted: 2006-11-27 10:05
by silkworm
God vs. Science

TIME Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006

We revere faith and scientific progress, hunger for miracles and for MRIs. But are the worldviews compatible? TIME convenes a debate

By DAVID VAN BIEMA


There are two great debates under the broad heading of Science vs. God. The more familiar over the past few years is the narrower of the two: Can Darwinian evolution withstand the criticisms of Christians who believe that it contradicts the creation account in the Book of Genesis? In recent years, creationism took on new currency as the spiritual progenitor of "intelligent design" (I.D.), a scientifically worded attempt to show that blanks in the evolutionary narrative are more meaningful than its very convincing totality. I.D. lost some of its journalistic heat last December when a federal judge dismissed it as pseudoscience unsuitable for teaching in Pennsylvania schools.

But in fact creationism and I.D. are intimately related to a larger unresolved question, in which the aggressor's role is reversed: Can religion stand up to the progress of science? This debate long predates Darwin, but the antireligion position is being promoted with increasing insistence by scientists angered by intelligent design and excited, perhaps intoxicated, by their disciplines' increasing ability to map, quantify and change the nature of human experience. Brain imaging illustrates--in color!--the physical seat of the will and the passions, challenging the religious concept of a soul independent of glands and gristle. Brain chemists track imbalances that could account for the ecstatic states of visionary saints or, some suggest, of Jesus. Like Freudianism before it, the field of evolutionary psychology generates theories of altruism and even of religion that do not include God. Something called the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology speculates that ours may be but one in a cascade of universes, suddenly bettering the odds that life could have cropped up here accidentally, without divine intervention. (If the probabilities were 1 in a billion, and you've got 300 billion universes, why not?)

Roman Catholicism's Christoph Cardinal Schönborn has dubbed the most fervent of faith-challenging scientists followers of "scientism" or "evolutionism," since they hope science, beyond being a measure, can replace religion as a worldview and a touchstone. It is not an epithet that fits everyone wielding a test tube. But a growing proportion of the profession is experiencing what one major researcher calls "unprecedented outrage" at perceived insults to research and rationality, ranging from the alleged influence of the Christian right on Bush Administration science policy to the fanatic faith of the 9/11 terrorists to intelligent design's ongoing claims. Some are radicalized enough to publicly pick an ancient scab: the idea that science and religion, far from being complementary responses to the unknown, are at utter odds--or, as Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has written bluntly, "Religion and science will always clash." The market seems flooded with books by scientists describing a caged death match between science and God--with science winning, or at least chipping away at faith's underlying verities.

Finding a spokesman for this side of the question was not hard, since Richard Dawkins, perhaps its foremost polemicist, has just come out with The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin), the rare volume whose position is so clear it forgoes a subtitle. The five-week New York Times best seller (now at No.8 ) attacks faith philosophically and historically as well as scientifically, but leans heavily on Darwinian theory, which was Dawkins' expertise as a young scientist and more recently as an explicator of evolutionary psychology so lucid that he occupies the Charles Simonyi professorship for the public understanding of science at Oxford University.

Dawkins is riding the crest of an atheist literary wave. In 2004, The End of Faith, a multipronged indictment by neuroscience grad student Sam Harris, was published (over 400,000 copies in print). Harris has written a 96-page follow-up, Letter to a Christian Nation, which is now No. 14 on the Times list. Last February, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett produced Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, which has sold fewer copies but has helped usher the discussion into the public arena.

If Dennett and Harris are almost-scientists (Dennett runs a multidisciplinary scientific-philosophic program), the authors of half a dozen aggressively secular volumes are card carriers: In Moral Minds, Harvard biologist Marc Hauser explores the--nondivine--origins of our sense of right and wrong (September); in Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast (due in January) by self-described "atheist-reductionist-materialist" biologist Lewis Wolpert, religion is one of those impossible things; Victor Stenger, a physicist-astronomer, has a book coming out titled God: The Failed Hypothesis. Meanwhile, Ann Druyan, widow of archskeptical astrophysicist Carl Sagan, has edited Sagan's unpublished lectures on God and his absence into a book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience, out this month.

Dawkins and his army have a swarm of articulate theological opponents, of course. But the most ardent of these don't really care very much about science, and an argument in which one party stands immovable on Scripture and the other immobile on the periodic table doesn't get anyone very far. Most Americans occupy the middle ground: we want it all. We want to cheer on science's strides and still humble ourselves on the Sabbath. We want access to both MRIs and miracles. We want debates about issues like stem cells without conceding that the positions are so intrinsically inimical as to make discussion fruitless. And to balance formidable standard bearers like Dawkins, we seek those who possess religious conviction but also scientific achievements to credibly argue the widespread hope that science and God are in harmony--that, indeed, science is of God.

Informed conciliators have recently become more vocal. Stanford University biologist Joan Roughgarden has just come out with Evolution and Christian Faith, which provides what she calls a "strong Christian defense" of evolutionary biology, illustrating the discipline's major concepts with biblical passages. Entomologist Edward O. Wilson, a famous skeptic of standard faith, has written The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, urging believers and non-believers to unite over conservation. But foremost of those arguing for common ground is Francis Collins.

Collins' devotion to genetics is, if possible, greater than Dawkins'. Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute since 1993, he headed a multinational 2,400-scientist team that co-mapped the 3 billion biochemical letters of our genetic blueprint, a milestone that then President Bill Clinton honored in a 2000 White House ceremony, comparing the genome chart to Meriwether Lewis' map of his fateful continental exploration. Collins continues to lead his institute in studying the genome and mining it for medical breakthroughs.

He is also a forthright Christian who converted from atheism at age 27 and now finds time to advise young evangelical scientists on how to declare their faith in science's largely agnostic upper reaches. His summer best seller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press), laid out some of the arguments he brought to bear in the 90-minute debate TIME arranged between Dawkins and Collins in our offices at the Time & Life Building in New York City on Sept. 30. Some excerpts from their spirited exchange:

TIME: Professor Dawkins, if one truly understands science, is God then a delusion, as your book title suggests?

DAWKINS: The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.

TIME: Dr. Collins, you believe that science is compatible with Christian faith.

COLLINS: Yes. God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer. From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in.

TIME: Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard paleontologist, famously argued that religion and science can coexist, because they occupy separate, airtight boxes. You both seem to disagree.

COLLINS: Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life. Because I do believe in God's creative power in having brought it all into being in the first place, I find that studying the natural world is an opportunity to observe the majesty, the elegance, the intricacy of God's creation.

DAWKINS: I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

TIME: Professor Dawkins, you think Darwin's theory of evolution does more than simply contradict the Genesis story.

DAWKINS: Yes. For centuries the most powerful argument for God's existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer. But Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection. Each step is not too improbable for us to countenance, but when you add them up cumulatively over millions of years, you get these monsters of improbability, like the human brain and the rain forest. It should warn us against ever again assuming that because something is complicated, God must have done it.

COLLINS: I don't see that Professor Dawkins' basic account of evolution is incompatible with God's having designed it.

TIME: When would this have occurred?

COLLINS: By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence, at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both foresee the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.

DAWKINS: I think that's a tremendous cop-out. If God wanted to create life and create humans, it would be slightly odd that he should choose the extraordinarily roundabout way of waiting for 10 billion years before life got started and then waiting for another 4 billion years until you got human beings capable of worshipping and sinning and all the other things religious people are interested in.

COLLINS: Who are we to say that that was an odd way to do it? I don't think that it is God's purpose to make his intention absolutely obvious to us. If it suits him to be a deity that we must seek without being forced to, would it not have been sensible for him to use the mechanism of evolution without posting obvious road signs to reveal his role in creation?

TIME: Both your books suggest that if the universal constants, the six or more characteristics of our universe, had varied at all, it would have made life impossible. Dr. Collins, can you provide an example?

COLLINS: The gravitational constant, if it were off by one part in a hundred million million, then the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang would not have occurred in the fashion that was necessary for life to occur. When you look at that evidence, it is very difficult to adopt the view that this was just chance. But if you are willing to consider the possibility of a designer, this becomes a rather plausible explanation for what is otherwise an exceedingly improbable event--namely, our existence.

DAWKINS: People who believe in God conclude there must have been a divine knob twiddler who twiddled the knobs of these half-dozen constants to get them exactly right. The problem is that this says, because something is vastly improbable, we need a God to explain it. But that God himself would be even more improbable. Physicists have come up with other explanations. One is to say that these six constants are not free to vary. Some unified theory will eventually show that they are as locked in as the circumference and the diameter of a circle. That reduces the odds of them all independently just happening to fit the bill. The other way is the multiverse way. That says that maybe the universe we are in is one of a very large number of universes. The vast majority will not contain life because they have the wrong gravitational constant or the wrong this constant or that constant. But as the number of universes climbs, the odds mount that a tiny minority of universes will have the right fine-tuning.

COLLINS: This is an interesting choice. Barring a theoretical resolution, which I think is unlikely, you either have to say there are zillions of parallel universes out there that we can't observe at present or you have to say there was a plan. I actually find the argument of the existence of a God who did the planning more compelling than the bubbling of all these multiverses. So Occam's razor--Occam says you should choose the explanation that is most simple and straightforward--leads me more to believe in God than in the multiverse, which seems quite a stretch of the imagination.

DAWKINS: I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine. What I can't understand is why you invoke improbability and yet you will not admit that you're shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word God.

COLLINS: My God is not improbable to me. He has no need of a creation story for himself or to be fine-tuned by something else. God is the answer to all of those "How must it have come to be" questions.

DAWKINS: I think that's the mother and father of all cop-outs. It's an honest scientific quest to discover where this apparent improbability comes from. Now Dr. Collins says, "Well, God did it. And God needs no explanation because God is outside all this." Well, what an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain. Scientists don't do that. Scientists say, "We're working on it. We're struggling to understand."

COLLINS: Certainly science should continue to see whether we can find evidence for multiverses that might explain why our own universe seems to be so finely tuned. But I do object to the assumption that anything that might be outside of nature is ruled out of the conversation. That's an impoverished view of the kinds of questions we humans can ask, such as "Why am I here?", "What happens after we die?", "Is there a God?" If you refuse to acknowledge their appropriateness, you end up with a zero probability of God after examining the natural world because it doesn't convince you on a proof basis. But if your mind is open about whether God might exist, you can point to aspects of the universe that are consistent with that conclusion.

DAWKINS: To me, the right approach is to say we are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God--it's that that seems to me to close off the discussion.

TIME: Could the answer be God?

DAWKINS: There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.

COLLINS: That's God.

DAWKINS: Yes. But it could be any of a billion Gods. It could be God of the Martians or of the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri. The chance of its being a particular God, Yahweh, the God of Jesus, is vanishingly small--at the least, the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think that's the case.

TIME: The Book of Genesis has led many conservative Protestants to oppose evolution and some to insist that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

COLLINS: There are sincere believers who interpret Genesis 1 and 2 in a very literal way that is inconsistent, frankly, with our knowledge of the universe's age or of how living organisms are related to each other. St. Augustine wrote that basically it is not possible to understand what was being described in Genesis. It was not intended as a science textbook. It was intended as a description of who God was, who we are and what our relationship is supposed to be with God. Augustine explicitly warns against a very narrow perspective that will put our faith at risk of looking ridiculous. If you step back from that one narrow interpretation, what the Bible describes is very consistent with the Big Bang.

DAWKINS: Physicists are working on the Big Bang, and one day they may or may not solve it. However, what Dr. Collins has just been--may I call you Francis?

COLLINS: Oh, please, Richard, do so.

DAWKINS: What Francis was just saying about Genesis was, of course, a little private quarrel between him and his Fundamentalist colleagues ...

COLLINS: It's not so private. It's rather public. [Laughs.]

DAWKINS: ... It would be unseemly for me to enter in except to suggest that he'd save himself an awful lot of trouble if he just simply ceased to give them the time of day. Why bother with these clowns?

COLLINS: Richard, I think we don't do a service to dialogue between science and faith to characterize sincere people by calling them names. That inspires an even more dug-in position. Atheists sometimes come across as a bit arrogant in this regard, and characterizing faith as something only an idiot would attach themselves to is not likely to help your case.

TIME: Dr. Collins, the Resurrection is an essential argument of Christian faith, but doesn't it, along with the virgin birth and lesser miracles, fatally undermine the scientific method, which depends on the constancy of natural laws?

COLLINS: If you're willing to answer yes to a God outside of nature, then there's nothing inconsistent with God on rare occasions choosing to invade the natural world in a way that appears miraculous. If God made the natural laws, why could he not violate them when it was a particularly significant moment for him to do so? And if you accept the idea that Christ was also divine, which I do, then his Resurrection is not in itself a great logical leap.

TIME: Doesn't the very notion of miracles throw off science?

COLLINS: Not at all. If you are in the camp I am, one place where science and faith could touch each other is in the investigation of supposedly miraculous events.

DAWKINS: If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle. All kinds of things may happen which we by the lights of today's science would classify as a miracle just as medieval science might a Boeing 747. Francis keeps saying things like "From the perspective of a believer." Once you buy into the position of faith, then suddenly you find yourself losing all of your natural skepticism and your scientific--really scientific--credibility. I'm sorry to be so blunt.

COLLINS: Richard, I actually agree with the first part of what you said. But I would challenge the statement that my scientific instincts are any less rigorous than yours. The difference is that my presumption of the possibility of God and therefore the supernatural is not zero, and yours is.

TIME: Dr. Collins, you have described humanity's moral sense not only as a gift from God but as a signpost that he exists.

COLLINS: There is a whole field of inquiry that has come up in the last 30 or 40 years--some call it sociobiology or evolutionary psychology--relating to where we get our moral sense and why we value the idea of altruism, and locating both answers in behavioral adaptations for the preservation of our genes. But if you believe, and Richard has been articulate in this, that natural selection operates on the individual, not on a group, then why would the individual risk his own DNA doing something selfless to help somebody in a way that might diminish his chance of reproducing? Granted, we may try to help our own family members because they share our DNA. Or help someone else in expectation that they will help us later. But when you look at what we admire as the most generous manifestations of altruism, they are not based on kin selection or reciprocity. An extreme example might be Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chambers. That's the opposite of saving his genes. We see less dramatic versions every day. Many of us think these qualities may come from God--especially since justice and morality are two of the attributes we most readily identify with God.

DAWKINS: Can I begin with an analogy? Most people understand that sexual lust has to do with propagating genes. Copulation in nature tends to lead to reproduction and so to more genetic copies. But in modern society, most copulations involve contraception, designed precisely to avoid reproduction. Altruism probably has origins like those of lust. In our prehistoric past, we would have lived in extended families, surrounded by kin whose interests we might have wanted to promote because they shared our genes. Now we live in big cities. We are not among kin nor people who will ever reciprocate our good deeds. It doesn't matter. Just as people engaged in sex with contraception are not aware of being motivated by a drive to have babies, it doesn't cross our mind that the reason for do-gooding is based in the fact that our primitive ancestors lived in small groups. But that seems to me to be a highly plausible account for where the desire for morality, the desire for goodness, comes from.

COLLINS: For you to argue that our noblest acts are a misfiring of Darwinian behavior does not do justice to the sense we all have about the absolutes that are involved here of good and evil. Evolution may explain some features of the moral law, but it can't explain why it should have any real significance. If it is solely an evolutionary convenience, there is really no such thing as good or evil. But for me, it is much more than that. The moral law is a reason to think of God as plausible--not just a God who sets the universe in motion but a God who cares about human beings, because we seem uniquely amongst creatures on the planet to have this far-developed sense of morality. What you've said implies that outside of the human mind, tuned by evolutionary processes, good and evil have no meaning. Do you agree with that?

DAWKINS: Even the question you're asking has no meaning to me. Good and evil--I don't believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil. I think that there are good things that happen and bad things that happen.

COLLINS: I think that is a fundamental difference between us. I'm glad we identified it.

TIME: Dr. Collins, I know you favor the opening of new stem-cell lines for experimentation. But doesn't the fact that faith has caused some people to rule this out risk creating a perception that religion is preventing science from saving lives?

COLLINS: Let me first say as a disclaimer that I speak as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Executive Branch of the United States government. The impression that people of faith are uniformly opposed to stem-cell research is not documented by surveys. In fact, many people of strong religious conviction think this can be a morally supportable approach.

TIME: But to the extent that a person argues on the basis of faith or Scripture rather than reason, how can scientists respond?

COLLINS: Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation. So such discussions between scientists and believers happen quite readily. But neither scientists nor believers always embody the principles precisely. Scientists can have their judgment clouded by their professional aspirations. And the pure truth of faith, which you can think of as this clear spiritual water, is poured into rusty vessels called human beings, and so sometimes the benevolent principles of faith can get distorted as positions are hardened.

DAWKINS: For me, moral questions such as stem-cell research turn upon whether suffering is caused. In this case, clearly none is. The embryos have no nervous system. But that's not an issue discussed publicly. The issue is, Are they human? If you are an absolutist moralist, you say, "These cells are human, and therefore they deserve some kind of special moral treatment." Absolutist morality doesn't have to come from religion but usually does.

We slaughter nonhuman animals in factory farms, and they do have nervous systems and do suffer. People of faith are not very interested in their suffering.

COLLINS: Do humans have a different moral significance than cows in general?

DAWKINS: Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.

TIME: Do the two of you have any concluding thoughts?

COLLINS: I just would like to say that over more than a quarter-century as a scientist and a believer, I find absolutely nothing in conflict between agreeing with Richard in practically all of his conclusions about the natural world, and also saying that I am still able to accept and embrace the possibility that there are answers that science isn't able to provide about the natural world--the questions about why instead of the questions about how. I'm interested in the whys. I find many of those answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist.

DAWKINS: My mind is not closed, as you have occasionally suggested, Francis. My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable--but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don't see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

With reporting by With reporting by David Bjerklie, Alice Park/New York, Dan Cray/Los Angeles, Jeff Israely/Rome

Posted: 2006-11-27 10:16
by Jun
DAWKINS: ... what Dr. Collins has just been--may I call you Francis?

COLLINS: Oh, please, Richard, do so.
:mrgreen: :lol:

Oh, deary. How lovely.

At least "Richard" didn't mention Spaghetti Monster in the same sentence as "Francis"'s Christian God.

Posted: 2006-11-27 14:39
by dropby
因为JUN这篇一开头就提到肖氏反射弧, 关于肖氏反射弧, 方舟子是这样说的, 大家可以放狗搜一下方舟子说的是不是真的.

关于对“肖氏反射弧”的评论问题

判决书称:

“原告肖传国认为“肖氏反射弧”在我国医药学教材《外科学》中有记载,
且已获得我国权威部门颁发的各种奖项及鉴定结论,此理论在我国医学界已获得
广泛认可。被告方是民在文章中称“据业内专家介绍,所谓‘肖氏反射弧’、
‘肖氏术’就连在国内医学界也没有得到认可”与事实不符。被告方是民认为,
被告从美国国家医学图书馆和google上检索“肖氏反射弧”、“肖氏术”,检索
结果是零。因此,“肖氏反射弧”、“肖氏术”未获国际认同。”

“本院认为:原告肖传国的‘肖氏反射弧’理论,在国际上有获奖证书,国
内有鉴定结论和获奖证书,国内教科书亦曾引用其理论,原告的‘肖氏反射弧’
理论是客观存在的。”

原告出示的“国际获奖证书,国内鉴定结论和获奖证书”根本就没有“肖氏
反射弧”的说法,吕瑛等人看不懂国际获奖证书,难道连“肖氏反射弧”这五个
汉字也不认识?那些鉴定结论和获奖证书有这五个汉字吗?“国内教科书”倒是
提到了“肖氏反射弧”,但是那书是肖传国的导师裘法祖编的,不也是属于“自
吹自擂”?我也从来没有否认“原告的‘肖氏反射弧’理论是客观存在的”(这
是废话,即使只有肖传国一个人在讲“肖氏反射弧”,它也是客观存在的),我
否认的是“肖氏反射弧”是国际公认,对此,我在文章中说得清清楚楚:

肖传国还有一项非常惊人的成就,“1988年,他提出国际公认的‘肖氏反射
弧’原理――外科领域里仅有的几项以中国人名字命名的手术原理。”在医学文
献数据库和在网上检索“肖氏反射弧”的英文名称(xiao's reflex arc),结
果都是零。检索肖传国自称根据该原理实施的“肖氏术”的英文名称(xiao's
procedure),只出来一个网页,是肖传国在北京的一次学术会议上的报告的题
目。可见,所谓“国际公认”云云,完全是肖传国本人的自吹自擂。前面已经提
到,从肖传国论文极低的引用次数就可以看出,他在国际上毫无影响。据业内专
家介绍,所谓“肖氏反射弧”、“肖氏术”就连在国内医学界也没有得到认可。

Posted: 2006-11-27 15:04
by dropby
我非常同意JUN说的有时候很难断定一个东西是不是"科学的". 但另一方面, 断定一个东西是"不科学的"很多时候并不那么难. 而且不需要专家权威, 只需要有最基本的科学素养. 比如"水变油", 显然是骗局. 不需要请教物理学家.

比如一个学术理论如果在所有有关学科的文献里面都找不到, 显然不可能是国际公认的.

进化论是不是"科学"或者"绝对真理"可以讨论, 神创论和科学不沾边大多数学生物的都没有疑问? 还是说学生物的也可能认为神创论是真理?

Posted: 2006-11-27 15:11
by 森林的火焰
进化论虽然没能完全被证明,但它是科学的。因为现有的证据没有跟进化论起冲突,都符合进化论的解释;只不过是因为实验手段所限,不可能以最强硬的逻辑证据来证明进化论。没有完全被证明不等于不科学。事实上,很多理论都是没有完全被证明的,但它们最符合现有的数据和观察。
如果说进化论只是还没搜集到足够的证据,神创论是没有一丝证据,除了一些人臆造的“常识”,比如“这么整齐有序的东西不可能没有个造物主”。导致科学家们觉得不值一辨,神的追随者们振振有辞。

Posted: 2006-11-27 15:24
by Jun
Conceptually, there is nothing glorious or magical or special about the adjective of something being "scientific." Science is in essence the pursuit of truth in a material and knowable world. It operates under the assumptions that the universe behaves in a consistent and reproducible way and the way of the universe can be known through human observation. Or, perhaps you can say that science assume there is an absolute truth about how everything works and what everything is in this universe, and the truth can be known through observation and testing.

OK, once we have established this foundation, then we can discuss what is scientific and what is not. If a theory is contradictory to observations and established scientific theories that are supported by all available observations, then it's false, according to the premise of scientific methods. Then it is as far from the truth as ... infinity.

So the validity of a scientific theory is measured by its proximity to the assumed Truth of the universe. It is safe to say that we will never get to the actual point of the absolute Truth, but through science we can get as close as we humanly can. It is not humanly possible to know with absolute certainty if evolution or Theory of Relativity or Laws of Thermodynamics are exact and absolute Truths of the universe. That's sort of the point -- moving another inch closer to what things are and how they actually work -- that is what science is.

This of course operates also under the assumption that the "Way of the universe" is constant and exists outside of human desires, morality, perception, and wishful thinking, and our willingness to believe. Essentially the Truth is indifferent to humanity. That's what Dr. Collins cannot bear to accept. That's why he needs a God to make things right, just for us, to run the universe. Everyone is free to think what they want. Keep in mind that science contends that the Truth of the universe doesn't give a damn.

I have absolutely no idea what “肖氏反射弧”is or whether it has anything to do with physics or medicine or astrology. Why does science insist on publication of theories to the large "scientific community"? Do scientists want to protect their turf by beating up and outnumbering new ideas? Well, they could, but the purpose of publication in international and reputable venues is really PEER REVIEW. You tell a large number of your peers what your theory is, to give them a chance to test it, and see if they come up with the same idea, and to give them a chance to critique it and even attack it, because the closer to the Truth it is, the more it withstands testing and questioning and critique.

The rules and assumptions in the scientific community have been in place for a reason, but they are not particularly simple concepts and are not easy or instinctive to grasp for an outsider.

Posted: 2006-11-27 15:44
by dropby
森林的火焰 wrote:进化论虽然没能完全被证明,但它是科学的。因为现有的证据没有跟进化论起冲突,都符合进化论的解释;只不过是因为实验手段所限,不可能以最强硬的逻辑证据来证明进化论。没有完全被证明不等于不科学。事实上,很多理论都是没有完全被证明的,但它们最符合现有的数据和观察。
如果说进化论只是还没搜集到足够的证据,神创论是没有一丝证据,除了一些人臆造的“常识”,比如“这么整齐有序的东西不可能没有个造物主”。导致科学家们觉得不值一辨,神的追随者们振振有辞。
OK. 现在我可以改疑问句为肯定句了. :-P

进化论是不是"科学"或者"绝对真理"可以讨论, 神创论和科学不沾边大多数学生物的都没有疑问.

Posted: 2006-11-27 16:06
by 猫咪头
进化论虽然没能完全被证明,
Evolution is not a theory. Evolution happened. That we know for sure. How exactly is happened is being clarified. And what is the inner strength that motivate Evolution (that we know surely happened) has several compelling hypotheses.

It is just as this: You walk into a crime site, blood everywhere, a man dead with a knife through his back. You know that a murder happened. Through investigation, we have pretty sure who is the main suspect and how it happens. There is a debate of whether this is a crime of passion or is there money involved. But all in all, a murder happened, one can't say "Oh, I heard the police is debating whether love or money is the motivation, so the case if not complete, this man died of natual causes.

Posted: 2006-11-27 22:58
by beneathwing
My friend, a Christian, wrote about his opinion on the finding of soft tissue of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

http://www.calacademy.org/science_now/h ... issue.html

I wonder what you think of it. Here is what he wrote.

"In the article they discuss the discovery of a T-rex thigh bone in Montana. The bone was so large that they had to break it in half to transport. When they broke it open they found soft tissue that included blood vessels, bone cells, and possibly blood cells. They than claim that this tissue is 70 million years old…alright with such a claim they must have some plausible explanation of how soft tissue could have lasted so long without either fossilizing or decaying. Well it basically avoids this point completely until at the very end of the article when it asks the question, will we be able to clone a T-rex? Their response… “Probably not

Posted: 2006-11-27 23:26
by 森林的火焰
ok this is a totally "amateurish arguer" writing out sth. plausible from knowledge "bits". He/she even has no idea that the age of the fossil is simply claimed but measured and the measurement strategy has already been certified many many times...
I dont' think the dinosaur can't be cloned just because the DNA won't last that long. Actually some of them did, and that's how people understand who's whose relatives...There are so many other factors, like, there'll be no dinosaur oocyte, which is the key of a successful cloning, and a giant dinosaur yolk. People may get something from dinosaur DNA, but by no means will the scientists acclaim they are the genuine dinosaurs. That is not the right conclusion.

Posted: 2006-11-28 1:35
by 猫咪头
1. For animal bones to be fossilzed is a complicated and slow process.
Bones that are not fully fossilized has been found before. I personally know of a thigh bone from a large ape was so well preserved in carbon-rich soils that it remains as a BONE, not a fossile. You can even tell by weight, for fossile weighs as rock, and this thing is so light.
The surprise of the discovery is that the dino bone is not fully fossilized though it appears so on the outside. Considering how big the bone is, it is quite possible.
And it is quite possible that other fossile may have live tissues in them too, had they been examined promptly.

2. Read a molecular biology textbook, please.
It is as if you are trying to prove ice-cream can't exist.

3. Dinos existed on earth for a long long time. And it is not always the same dino. They evolve too.
There are earlier human species that dated back quite far. The specie that we all are, homo sapien, bloomed relatively late.
But it is quite possible that some ape exist before the first dramatic climate changes. (I believe it is a common idea now.)
These lapes are the ancestors of modern day human, monkey, chimp, and other humans, and ape that lost during the battle for surviving during the years.

You see, we and apes have opposing thumbs, the other mammals don't. We and the apes and lemur and certain other non-money has dry skin between our noses and lips, other mammals don't (think dogs and cows). And we and other mammals have fur/ hair, no other animals have hair. And we and mammal and birds are warm blooded.....
It is all about where you draw the line.

And in the end, human and a single yeast cell, different as it seems, share most of their gene coding.
I can rescue a sick yeast cell (unable to make cetain amino acid) by give it a copy of the human gene.

Posted: 2006-11-28 9:08
by Jun
这种"You Evolutionists don't even want to admit"啦啦啦的人,跟他们没有什么道理好讲,纯属浪费时间精力。Who cares why bother?一张口就知道是什么套路了。我一直认为,随便啦,信仰自由,言论自由,思想更自由,爱信啥信啥。人类自从有了consciousness以后,几十万年都是P也不懂不知道,连刮风下雨都不知道是为什么,天上的星星是钉子,世界是平的,太阳公公天天早晨起来爬上天。不也好好地生存下来了吗?知道了又怎么样。人民大众不需要太了解科学,只要拿起电话有响,进医院有药吃有针打,一扭开关灯就亮,上了飞机能越洋,管它是怎么回事的呢!

(Evolutionist,居然发明出这种词儿来,真笑死人了,好象我们要搞自己的宗教运动,跟Buddhists, Episcopalians, Baptists, whatever平起平坐似的。)

Francis Collins来推销他的书时,我这张大嘴管不住自己,在问答时当众讲:其实一个人不需要懂进化论不需要知道化石从何而来一样可以在实验室里run PCR,gene chips microarray,培养细菌,写论文,成名成家啊,受了科学教育,戴上科学家的名头,就通晓所有科学理论了吗?古往今来无神论者大多也不是科学家。我忍下没说的是:相信不相信冥冥中有没有一个照顾你吃喝拉撒生老病死足球比赛胜负考试及格入榜的神明上帝,需要科学,生物学,进化论来证明或者否定么?去拿本伏尔泰来读读就好了,一个字也没提到化石恐龙carbon dating。

Posted: 2006-11-28 12:43
by dropby
虽然专家的话不可盲信, 不过关于进化论, 我已经有经验, 千万不能听教徒们的, 千万得听生物学家的.

宗教和科学本来是不矛盾的, 如果宗教不非说自己也是科学, 不非说进化论不科学的话.

其实进化论和信神也不矛盾, 如果信神不等于非得相信人类由上帝创造, 只有六千年历史.