Leading journal accused of abandoning science over ‘social justice agenda’

How (and perhaps why?) on earth did a thread about the editorial policies of scientific journals and the politicisation of science turn into a discussion about religion/existence or otherwise of god?
There’s a whole other board for such debates.

Your condescension doesn't have any effect. It isn't convincing. Many people just as intelligent as you have a different worldview. I will continue to try to puzzle things out based on my personal experience of life and on logic. In my opinion, those omni words are an approximation; one can easily show that [a] God cannot do anything that is contrary to his own nature. It is not impossible for [a] God to have good reasons for not acting. You seem to think that life must be nice, and that suffering is a moral evil. My own experience of life is that I wouldn't change my past in order to avoid suffering – that would be to change the person that I am, and I would no longer be me. Suffering is, thank God 😉, temporary, both in my worldview and I suspect in yours.

Meh, seems the rational can be rationalised into the non rational in these parts… 😉

Yes, always a difficulty explaining something non-rational, given the rational nature of explanation itself as an endeavour.

This is something you fall foul of all the time, @Howseitgoin. It's good to read you examining the notion of explaining something non-rational. Perhaps you might think about how this might apply to your more usual attempts at non-rational explanation in other threads here on MN?

"'bad things' from what viewpoint?"

-- Not really from any particular viewpoint. Some things are just bad. For example, unnecessarily inflicted suffering. Just bad.

OK, Epicurus/Hume only proves that if God exists he can't be omnipotent omniscient and omnibenevolent given bad things happen.

That's generally taken as true of God by definition, though. If you think God does (or even might) exist, you perhaps need to ask yourself which of these three qualities - omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence - you don't think God has (hence picking a specific traditional heresy).

You admit you "may be entirely wrong". That's a good first step. Next step is to accept, when it's pointed out, that you are entirely wrong. Not many people can manage that, ime. Some do, though.

'bad things' from what viewpoint? That of a human living on planet earth? Whatever God is, that is not the scale it works on.

The Bible is lots of different accounts of how humans can relate to God and try to make 'things' better. Without trying to cut God down to size.

Wow, how impressive.

Make some unfalsifiable and simplistic assumptions about God and that proves that God doesn't exist?

But I wasn't attempting to prove or disprove anything. I was pointing out that we all have opinions that are unproven, and in my opinion unprovable. Show me anyone who doesn't base their worldview on assumptions. My own is a working hypothesis, which I find more convincing than the alternatives I am aware of. I may be entirely wrong.

I think the problem here is attempting to explain something non rational when we are rational beings that are limited by human perception.

From my own personal standpoint (the only one I can humanly speak some what authoritatively about) is G-d is recognising a sense of inner divinity which I can only describe as a deep sense of reverence & preciousness that my life is & responsibility to live it benevolently. You might categorise that as something most people have but from my experience of not having that understanding for most of my life then for some inexplicable reason then being privy to it, I can only say it's being intensely more so to the point that your more materially motivated identity dies & you recognise & embrace your responsibility in improving the world you live in & have immense gratitude for that opportunity.

G-d's omniscient, omnipotence and omni benevolence lives within IE individuals have the capacity of those powers within & therefore over themselves to affect change in the world.

Just for the record (with apologies for following a derail).

A proof that God doesn't exist:

God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

Bad things happen in the world.

Now, either God doesn't know about these bad things, or he can't stop them, or he doesn't care about them ... otherwise there just wouldn't be these bad things. But there are.

So there is no God.

[Argument paraphrased from Epicurus, as also explained by David Hume. (Others too, of course.)]

Howseitgoin

>>>That's not what you said previously though, is it?<<<

Prove I didn't.

Anyone reading your original post will be able to conclude that you are posting from an inverted tub, whilst clapping, juggling a beach ball and barking "Arrp! Arrp!"

I'm not aware that anyone has EVER proven the non-existence of God either. Science is our best tool for answering many questions, but some questions are difficult for the scientific method to tackle, and we all come up with our own answers in the meantime. Not just "religious" people. Sensible people are aware of what they don't know certainly.

I have a worldview that is based on certain assumptions. I am aware of this; the assumptions are based partly on personal experience, and they are partly because the alternatives work less well for me. Some of my assumptions, such as the importance of physical reality over internal "identity", are easy for me to defend. Others, such as my political, religious and philosophical views, are less dogmatic.

This kind of aa approach has a lot of scope to go wrong, I think.

If there are, say, limited women in a field, an attempt to have the few there are will mean those individuals are doing quite a lot of that kind of work. That could lead to quite other kinds of unintentional bias.

You could also see it go farther, as when, in Canada, university scientists are being told they need to hire students based on race, not who is actually the best fit for the job.

It's also the case that "widening the lens" has been used effectivly in places like the USSR to bring in partisan elements. It's nice to think it will be neutral, but I think it should be looked at with a more cynical eye.

I'm not sure that's true. A lot of his views on religion involve the claim that logical positivism is self-evident and "scientific" and therefor ought to be believed.

Your premise is incorrect.

Science is about the systematic study of observable, empirical, phenomena.

Religion is typically a combination of elements of philosophy, particularly metaphysics, ethics, even epistemology and mathematics, psychology, sociology, and sometimes historical elements, all tied up in an individual or community based praxis.

There are some intersections between them, but they are largely separate. Science itself is rooted in particular epistemology, and particular metaphysics, so it's not like it's even more fundamental.

Pity his school doesn't seem to have taught him any more about 'the Bible' than you've learned.

70+ books of philosophy, stories, poetry, myth, legend, history, theology, produced over nearly 600 years, boiled down to 'Father Christmas and 'fairy tales'.

@MarieDeGournay - I agree, I think she was objecting to those invited to be the peers reviewing submissions to be from a more diverse background and my immediate reaction was to disagree with her.

As long as Nature (and the rest of the scientific community) is inviting fully qualified experts in their fields to review studies, I think having a broader base of people is a good thing. Other experiences and perspectives enrich our understanding ans can look at things from an angle possibly not yet considered.

However, if she's implying people are being asked when they are not as well qualified as the 'usual suspects' of older, white men, and that those 'diversity hires' are being elevated beyond their competence to peer review articles and studies, I'd want to hear her reasons for believing this.

Her other article about the cancelling of big names in scientific fields because they were awful in their personal lives or held repugnant ideas is extremely interesting and I was glad to hear her voice on this.

Prove I didn't.

As far as I know nobody has EVER proven that there is a God. This has nothing to do with scientific hypothesis testing; all religions wants us to just "believe". My son is in a catholic secondary because it's the only decent secondary where we live. He is quite amazed that adults believe in the Bible but I have told him to be as respectful of them as he is to younger family members believing in Father Christmas. He knows he is free to believe whatever he wants but he's too old to believe in fairy tales.

I know and have known plenty. Science has not come anywhere near answering all the questions we have, and I'm not persuaded that it ever will come anywhere near. Everyone, "religious" or not, has parts of their worldview that are not based on science and are not rational; if you doubt this, look at political stances. You may think your own political stance is rational, but it will have been formed to a large extent by your personal experiences, as will mine.

Politics and philosophy (and religion, which consists partly of philosophical thinking) are by their nature open to question. And parts of 'science' are at present highly speculative. If we took all scientific papers, and ordered them according to their degree of proof, we would find that many have little objective proof. The scientific method is powerful in part because things we thought we knew and understood can be disproven. This happens over and over again, so what we think we know now may be disproven or modified.

Yes - Krylov particularly takes exception to the idea she might be asked to peer review a paper because she’s a woman rather than because she’s one of the most appropriate experts in the relevant field. If journals can make an effort to find more diverse reviewers and authors who are also appropriately expert that’s great, but it’s the expertise which should always be the necessary condition.

Its similar to other criticisms of affirmative action done badly, except in the case of science there are usually more objective metrics for assessing merits vs eg politicians.

Have any representatives of Nature commented on the criticism?

Yes…it’s all a bit ‘…oh, there’s a squirrel’.

That's not what you said previously though, is it?