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From: John Harshman <john.harshman@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: George Coyne and Richard Dawkins
Date: Thu, 23 May 2024 08:01:53 -0700
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On 5/23/24 5:16 AM, Richmond wrote:
> John Harshman <john.harshman@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> On 5/22/24 8:59 AM, Richmond wrote:
>>> John Harshman <john.harshman@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 5/22/24 1:59 AM, Richmond wrote:
>>>>> *Hemidactylus* <ecphoric@allspamis.invalid> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Tue, 21 May 2024 14:58:19 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, 21 May 2024 10:54:16 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> On Mon, 20 May 2024 17:16:16 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> In this interview, at the point I link to:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> https://youtu.be/68ejfHahFK4?t=254
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Father Coyne offers Neodarwinian Evolution as an
>>>>>>>>>>>>> explanation for, among other things, the origin of the
>>>>>>>>>>>>> universe. And Professor Dawkins agrees with him. How does
>>>>>>>>>>>>> evolution of any kind have anything to do with the origin
>>>>>>>>>>>>> of the universe?  surely it would need something to evolve
>>>>>>>>>>>>> from?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> I got the impression that he was using "evolution" in a
>>>>>>>>>>>> wider sense than just *biological* evolution, that life
>>>>>>>>>>>> itself "evolved" from chemical reactions.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I suppose you could interpret "origin of the universe" as
>>>>>>>>>>> "origin of the content of the universe" and then say that it
>>>>>>>>>>> evolved from pure energy. But I am not sure if that is
>>>>>>>>>>> evolution strictly, or just changing from one thing to
>>>>>>>>>>> another. And I am not sure if energy is different from
>>>>>>>>>>> content, or if universe is different from content of the
>>>>>>>>>>> universe. In summary, I am not sure.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> When talking about a subject in what is essentially a
>>>>>>>>>> metaphysical way. I think we shouldn't get too hung up on the
>>>>>>>>>> precise meaning of specific words, it's the ideas behind the
>>>>>>>>>> words that matter.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> A fascinating interview that I had not seen before, thanks
>>>>>>>>>>>> for the link. Whilst I was aware of George Coyne, I never
>>>>>>>>>>>> really explored his ideas before and I was fascinated by how
>>>>>>>>>>>> much what he was saying echoed my own beliefs and ideas -
>>>>>>>>>>>> there was nothing he said that I would argue with and I
>>>>>>>>>>>> thought he handled Dawkins extremely well.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> The TV series from which it was excluded was quite
>>>>>>>>>>> entertaining. I think in that series Dawkins was struggling
>>>>>>>>>>> to keep the lid on his temper at times, although that could
>>>>>>>>>>> just be his natural expression.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I wasn't aware of that series. Any idea why this episode was
>>>>>>>>>> excluded?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> At the beginning of the video Dawkins explains that it was left
>>>>>>>>> out as there was too much overlap with an interview with the
>>>>>>>>> Archbishop of Canterbury.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> OK, I forgot that your link started ~4 mins in. I'll be
>>>>>>>> interested to hunt down the Archbishop of Canterbury episode,
>>>>>>>> but I'd expect it to have a lot of overlap with George Coyne. I
>>>>>>>> think that a lot of USians make the mistake of regarding the
>>>>>>>> likes of Ken Ham as a representative of mainstream Christianity
>>>>>>>> when he isn't - at least not outside the USA!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Coyne sounds rather confused to me. He doesn't seem to know what
>>>>>>> God is. He says God is not an engineer, and then he says God
>>>>>>> created the universe, that he is a prime mover, and gave us
>>>>>>> brains, and then he says God is superflous and doesn't explain
>>>>>>> things.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Coyne doesn’t think we are apes, so I disagree with him there.  He
>>>>> acknowledges that we evolved from apes so it is just how the
>>>>> categories are defined. I think he means we are not identical to
>>>>> what he thinks of as an ape.
>>>>>
>>>>>> But at around 56:31 when Dawkins asks him about ensoulment (a
>>>>>> bugbear of mine) Coyne says he doesn’t believe in the soul. Coyne
>>>>>> explicitly says around 56:43 that he doesn’t “believe this idea of
>>>>>> at some time in the evolutionary process God put a soul…”  >> He
>>>>>> got himself into that pickle by saying God is not an intervening
>>>>>>>> engineer. The alternative is that every living thing has a
>>>>>> soul.
>>>>
>>>> There are other alternatives. For example, the soul could be an
>>>> emergent property of the body, particularly of the brain. If he gave
>>>> us brains (mentioned above), souls could have come along with that,
>>>> and perhaps even gradually. Maybe chimps have
>>>> near-but-not-quite-souls.  >> So at what point in the transition
>>>> from ape to human did the soul >> appear, and why? Did Neandertals
>>>> have souls, or other kinds of human?  >> (And what's a soul
>>>> anyway?).
>>>
>> You should ask someone who thinks souls exist.
> 
> You can't say whether it exists or not, unless you define 'soul'. You
> will also have to define 'exists' too though.

No problem. I have a definition for each.

> My computer has a soul. I back up the soul to a removable disk. If the
> computer dies I can buy a new one, restore the soul from the backup, and
> my computer has lived on after its death.
> 
> (I don't have a backup really, backups are a thought experiment for me).
> 
Ah, the soul of a new machine.