Summations Only

Isn't one use of this board to correct creationists' misconceptions, rather than fit in with them? It's hardly my responsibility to change my language for the sake of those who don't understand it.And it's certainly not true that creationists use "why" only in relation to intent.Look at day to day usage, even that which concerns the actions of people.Person A enters the house, and is greeted by person B, who imparts some information, saying: "I broke the blue vase."Person A: "Why did you break the blue vase?"Possible answers from B: "Because I wanted to use the pieces in a collage I'm making." (intent involved).Because I didn't like it, and I couldn't stand the sight of the bloody thing any more." (intent also)."Because I tripped over the dog, and fell on it." (no intent)."Because I bumped into the table, and it fell." (no intent).The questioner, A, doesn't even know whether or not his question is about purpose. But his question is certainly about the immediate reason/cause behind the breaking of the vase.That's normal "why" usage for everyone, except Zen Deist, who believes that the proper use of why is only for purpose.

Can you think of any other reason to think otherwise?If the universe's existence is some absurd arbitrary condition that gave rise to sentient conscious beings. It is this eventuality that someone like myself would attribute this to some purpose.We are part of the universe, we in some way perpetuate our existence by way of participating in it. Observation affects reality. So why is it ludicrous to think perhaps there is a universal observer with a mind that can affect all reality? Oh I know because that would invoke to much woo.

As has been pointed out - Nobody is saying this at all. There are lots of questions science cannot answer. Whether or not they are phrased as 'Why' questions has little to do with anything. I would not look to science to answer questions of morality or aesthetics or to address whether or not one epistemology can be considered as superior to another etc.But - Most relevant to this thread - Science certainly cannot address questions pertaining to things that are not in any way demonstrably real. But the inability for science to address questions pertaining to evidentially baseless conjectures has absolutely nothing to do with the questions being formatted as ‘why’ questions.How vampires transform into bats. Where hell is. When it was that Apollo fell off of his chariot. Who made unicorns pink. Which one of the seven dwarfs most likes cheese. Etc. etc. None of these are 'why' questions. None of these questions can be addressed by science because none of these entities demonstrably exist.Likewise if you are going to ask "Why is the sky blue?" and insist that this question pertain to some sort of conscious purpose you must first demonstrate that there is some reason to think that there is a purposeful agent behind the colour of the sky.Otherwise your question is as meaningless as any other question (whether it be 'how' or 'who' or 'what' or 'when'....) pertaining to any other unevidenced entity isn't it?

I can think of lots of reasons people might be inclined to invoke such purpose. None of them anything other than demonstrably misleading in terms of reliability of conclusion however. It might well be all but inevitable that humans will ask silly questions and provide themselves with emotionally satisfying answers. Because the same sort of woo has a long record of failure and the methods of science are designed to eliminate as much as possible the human tendency to woo ourselves with such woo.Science is the most reliable method we have of objectively seeking an answer to the question of why it is humans seek woo woo answers to invented questions.

Modulous writes: I hope he does or accepts my mistake.I'm not able to come up with the right words. It has to do with "God did it" sorts of answers. For example your Consider a painter selecting to mix on her palette a certain color. If we has the entire brain scan by equipment advanced enough to record all manner of things from the moment of hew consciousness leading up to the moment she went to make the color, is it not possible that - with the in-depth understanding via the equipment - scientists could explain the color and give a "why" for the reason she made it?Is this a free will issue? Is the equipment revealing how she is predestined to pick that mix of pigments to get that color and why she likes that color?Is the extent to which science cannot answer a "why" question linked to the extent that free will is a factor?

I think we have already established in this thread that those who deny that science can investigate the causes of human purpose are adopting an evidentially unjustifiable position on the mind-body issue.As long as such purpose is a product of physical brains there is, in principle, no reason science cannot study it and answer the question as to 'why' people have the purposes that they state and/or exhibit.

bluegenes says: okay then.In my view, another use of this board would be to promote understanding, to provide a common, or at least unambiguous language to further that in terms all can accept. Exactly, but they do use it differently than evolutionists.

That was the position I took earlier, especially with jar. I don't think so... It is only a free will issue if you define 'free' as being 'free of deterministic laws'. If you are talking about free will meaning 'the capacity of making decisions without external duress', then it isn't a free will issue. Only if we assume there is a dualistic non-deterministic 'will' in operation. This goes back to my point about asking

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a why question that assumes something that is not a scientific issue

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If we instead assume that will is just a complex mechanistic thing (ie., an evidenced will), we can answer why questions about it to our hearts content

Funnily enough, the source of the kind of statements that I commented on in the O.P. is usually not the classical sort of creationist who springs to mind when the word creationist is used here (YECs, for example).If you visualise a spectrum with the YECs at one end and non-theistic naturalists at the other, there's a middle ground which is mainly covered by people who are often referred to as "theistic evolutionists". It is from this kind of area that the slogan "science answers the how questions and religion the why questions" usually seems to come, along with its attendant misconceptions like "science doesn't answer why questions".

I agree, although I must say even a broken clock is correct twice in 24 hours. Meaning even if a premise is based unreliable data, it could still be the right answer. I agree, but science must still come face to face with the possibilty that reality may be more woo-like than we can imagine.

As has been discussed numerous times elsewhere previously - Falling back on the argument "Well you can't prove it isn't true" and then insisting that the claim in question be taken seriously on that basis is just about the last gasp of a discredited argument.

I think Gould's "Non Overlapping Magesteria" has a lot to answer for on this. I doubt he invented the whole How Vs Why thing that so many non-fundamentalist theists/deists cling to. But he certainly seems to have amplified the whole thing.Here is a link on NOMA for the uninitiated.It all sounds very reasonable superficially. But falls apart upon any serious analysis.

Spot on. That's the kind of area, yes, although Gould himself wouldn't have made the "why" mistake.The current popular name for those identified with this sort of line is "accommodationists".

I don't think that's the same question. But if you're removing the underlying assuptions, then you are answering a different question. Its still answering an equivocation, not the question that was asked (which had certain underlying assuptions that you removed).

That's one point I was trying to get to: that the catchphrase should be looked at superficially. Its not proclaiming some limit of science's ability to answer certain semantic structures, but rather, its trying to clarify the differences in the kinds of answers that science and religion try to provide.