Jerry Coyne is to be congratulated for reading The Huffington Post. I can't be bothered, but I'm happy when he finds something interesting [CfI declares war on atheists].His latest discovery is a childish rant by John Shook, Director of Education and Senior Research Fellow, Center for Inquiry. Like Jerry Coyne, I am terrbily disappointed in the American branch of the Center for Inquiry. If the kind of nonsence they're spreading ever begins to contaminate the Centre for Inquiry in Canada then I will quite the organization. (I am currently a CFI Canada Advisory Fellow.)
Here's what Shook says in his HuffPo article [For Atheists and Believers, Ignorance Is No Excuse].
Atheists are getting a reputation for being a bunch of know-nothings. They know nothing of God, and not much more about religion, and they seem proud of their ignorance.The question before us is whether there is a God or there isn't. So far, I have not been convinced by any argument in favor of supernatural beings. Every single argument that I've encountered seems flawed. Many of them are stupid and nonsensical.
This reputation is a little unfair, yet when they profess how they can't comprehend God, atheists really mean it. To listen to the loudest atheists, you can hear the bewilderment. And they just can't believe how a thing like religion could appeal to any intelligent person. The mythological story told by atheists recounts how religion arose through vast ignorance and perversity. A plague upon humanity, really, infecting the dimwitted or foolish with viral memes about spirits and gods. If there's no arguing with irrational people or dumb viruses, what's to be done?
Astonished that intellectual defenses of religion are still maintained, many prominent atheists disparage theology. They either dismiss the subject as irrelevant, or, if they do bother to acknowledge it, slim refutations of outdated arguments for a medieval God seem enough. Atheists cheer on such bold leadership, but what is really being learned? Challenging religion's immunity from criticism is one thing; perpetuating contempt for religion's intellectual side is another. Too many followers only mimic the contempt, forgetting that you won't effectively criticize what you would not understand. The "know-nothing" wing of the so-called New Atheism really lives up to that label. Nonbelievers reveling in their ignorance are an embarrassing betrayal of the freethought legacy.
I am not a "know-nothing." I've made a big effort to learn the latest arguments for the existence of God. I've attended lectures by well-known theists and by well-known accommodationists. I read their books. I read their articles. I've even attended courses on religion.
I'm not going to embarrass the theists and accommodationists by listing the really stupid books written by people in the theist camp. John Shook has pointed out the worst of the theist arguments. Here's four books that supposedly represent the best of modern religious arguments for the existence of God ...
- The Big Questions in Science and religion. by Keith Ward (Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus, Oxford University), Templeton Foundation Press, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania (2008)
- Belief: Reading on the Reason for Faith edited by Francis Collins, HarperOne, New York (2010)
- Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science by Michael Ruse, Cambridge University Press, New York (2010)
- The Dawkin's Delusion: Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine. by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (2007)
This brings me to my challenge. I challenge all theists and all their accommodationist friends to post their very best 21st century, sophisticated (or not), arguments for the existence of God. They can put them in the comments section of this posting, or on any of the other atheist blogs, or on their own blogs and websites. Just send me the link. Try and make it concise and to the point. It would be nice if it's less than 100 years old. Keep in mind that there are over 1000 different gods so it would be helpful to explain just which gods the argument applies to.
I don't care where they post the argument, just get on with it. I'm not interested in any other details about theology. Those points only become relevant once you've convinced this atheist that you have a rational argument for the existence of God. Don't bother telling me how you reconcile your God with evil, or why you believe in miracles, or why transcendence is important in your life, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Don't insult my intelligence by pointing out that religion has done a lot of good things in the past as if that were proof of the existence of the supernatural. Don't be silly enough to try proving god by telling me that religion makes people feel good. So does chocolate, and wine.
Let's stop the whining about how "know-nothing" atheists are ignoring the very best arguments for the existence of God. Come on, all you theists and accommodationists, put your money where your mouth is. Give us something of substance instead of hiding behind The Courtier's Reply. Let's see the angels.
I'm betting that wimps like John Shook and his accommodationist friends don't have a damn clue what they're talking about. I'm betting that they haven't the foggiest notion of any new and sophisticated arguments for the existence of God that the New Atheists haven't already addressed. I'm betting they're just blowing smoke in order to provide cover for their theist friends in the hope of saving them from intellectual embarrassment.1
That's why he says in his article ...
Christian theology has come a long way since St. Thomas Aquinas. Under stress from modern science and Enlightenment philosophy, it has explored cosmological, ethical, emotional, and existential dimensions of religious life. Many kinds of theology have emerged, replacing a handful of traditional arguments for God with robust methods of defending religious viewpoints. There are philosophical atheists who have quietly and successfully kept pace. The discipline of atheology is quite capable of matching these theologies with its skeptical replies, so atheists need not be intimidated. Taking theology seriously enough to competently debate God should not be beneath atheism.Too bad he doesn't mention even one of those supposedly robust new arguments for the existence of supernatural beings. Could it possibly be because they don't exist?
Guess we'll find out pretty soon. I'll wait for one week.
1. They may also want to be saving themselves since many accommodationists have spent a lifetime studying theology. It must be embarrassing to be told that their life's work is no more important than studying fairy tales.
554 comments :
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 554 Newer› Newest»"My view is that the First Cause argument is the best starting point. I am convinced that in order for the universe or whatever to exist, there must be something that exists necessarily."
OK. For sake of argument, let's allow that. There was a first cause that existed necessarily.
Now explain why it's the Christian God, or a god at all, or gods, or anything supernatural, or anything even complex.
Now, I may be an atheist who, unlike an archbishop or theologian hasn't got a vested financial interest in ... sorry, sorry, I mean hasn't spent a lifetime studying theology ... but this seems to be a very common theological gambit these days, the 'therefore God' one.
'Science can't explain everything' - therefore God.
It's sleight of hand, and a ridiculous logical leap. The 'sophisticated' line seems to be that the mystery itself is something we can call god.
Well, OK - when I haven't the foggiest, I do my research, I don't worship the fog.
(just) Steve:
"Life must have structure, power and control. In living things the control is the brain, where our consciousness resides. The universe has structure which is matter; it has power, which is energy; and it has control, which are the laws of physics. Since our control function has consciousness, is it such a great leap to think that the control function of the universe has consciousness?"
You're arguing from analogy and your playing fast and loose with words to do it.
Using descriptors such as power and control to describe properties of the universe is nonsense, a completely unconvincing attempt to redefine words to mean what you want them to for the sake of your analogy.
I have no problem with that, Steve. It's clear to me that BOTH approaches have their uses and I'm glad there are people employing both. There are contexts in which ridicule is far more effective than gentle persuasion, and others in which the reverse is true.
What has no use, or excuse, whatsoever is the libeling of atheists by the likes of Shook. (Which has been rendered particularly laughable by the now-famous Pew study on the public's acquaintance with religious ideas, in which atheists and agnostics were the top scorers.)
"There is no adequate challenge to experience."
Sure there is.
I'm an atheist. I have never, ever, in any way shape or form had any experience that I interpret in any way as being divine in origin. I do not believe I have a soul. I have never prayed, I have never attended a religious service. I have read the holy books of many of the world religions, living and dead. Many of them are interesting, but solely as literature.
I have no sense of God. No god or gods would have designed me this way.
That's my experience. If I have to take a religious man's 'experience' into account, they have to take mine into account. Mine refutes theirs, theirs does not refute mine. If we take experience into account, there is no god.
Right, that's sorted. Lunchtime.
Steve LaBonne,
"That may be of concern to those who for some reason are interested in your personal psychology, but not otherwise."
Of course, the fact that I went through WHY I think that -- which makes this comment utterly irrelevant -- somehow passed you by ...
"And it's fallacious, because there's no reason at all to reject the possibility that that fact that something exists is contingent rather than necessary."
Um, I never argued that the fact that something exists is contingent. Actually, I think it IS contingent. I just think that contingent things need a cause to actually exist, and of course that things DO exist. Here, you demonstrate the problem of criticizing an argument that you don't actually understand.
"In fact current theories in cosmology make it quite clear that the existence of anything we would recognize as "something" is indeed contingent."
Perhaps (I did address some of the theories in cosmology in my coment) ... but why should we think that what cosmology would consider something is really all the somethings there are? You're doing the same thing you chide theists for doing: taking a mostly invented concept and applying it as if it was held universally, even though you have no idea if it does.
I'll deal with QM in another post, since two people brought it up.
@gillt
My main point is that life and consciousness are not separate and distinct from the properties and attributes of the universe itself or the laws of physics. They must be attributes else we could not have them. My analogy may have been poorly worded, but I think the main point is valid.
I just think that contingent things need a cause to actually exist
As has been pointed out multiple times in this thread, you may think this, but it's known to be false. (And this is not a small point because quantum fluctuations cause "something" to arise, uncaused, from "nothing" ALL THE FRICKING TIME.) So your "argument", if you have one, never even gets off the ground.
If that's the best you can do I will not bother to respond to you further.
Steve LaBonne, sqlrob,
Ah, quantum mechanics. I admit that I do tend to leave it out in these discussions, and maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it does make my argument wrong to do so. It certainly wouldn't be the ONLY objection to it (as I myself raised others). So about the only question is: does it make my entire argument obviously wrong?
I don't think so. First, we'd have to make sure that the definition of "cause" that's used is the same as the one used in the argument. I'm not sure about that, especially since the one that physics uses to say that you can't trace cause past the Big Bang clearly isn't (since it relies on time and preceding and the concept of cause actually doesn't).
Second, we'd have to ask if we can really call these quantum particles "contingent". In what sense? If in the sense that they could have not existed or the events might not have happened, then maybe that's true ... but then it still seems reasonable to ask why it happened. And if we can do that, it seems we can find something that looks like a cause ... even if it's just the result of a random process. But maybe just being able to answer "Why?" isn't good enough.
Third, we'd have to make sure that this QM interpretation is correct. It's certainly popular, but is it right, particularly on that matter? I don't know enough about QM to say.
Fourth, maybe you can answer my question by saying that the QM level is my necessary thing, my first cause. Then the question would be: can it do the heavy lifting in creating the universe? Would it be enough to explain what I want explained? Or is there still something missing?
Finally, can these QM processes generalize? Is it possible to generate things in this current universe -- where there clearly is not nothing -- to cases where there really is nothing? Even if something can come from nothing when we have lots of somethings around, can it happen where there really is NOTHING? This is the flaw in Hawkings' latest stab, in that it seems to me that he doesn't quite grasp what NOTHING really means.
But, maybe this really is an answer to my question. I'd like to see this worked out to the level so that I can answer these questions, but don't know enough about QM to really say. Anyone got a good reference?
(Also note that since I already found the arguments I presented unconvincing, this may not change much for me. Still interesting, though ...)
@anon
That's my experience. If I have to take a religious man's 'experience' into account, they have to take mine into account. Mine refutes theirs, theirs does not refute mine. If we take experience into account, there is no god.
I'm a biker. I ride motorcycles really fast. It's an amazing experience. I don't know if you've ever done that, but if you haven't done it then you've never experienced it. That doesn't mean my experience is invalid, it just means yours is incomplete.
verbosestoic:
The problem is that whether or not New Atheists have understood and correctly addressed the arguments is not at issue here; what is at issue here is whether the New Atheists have even seen the correct arguments.
There are at least a few critics of the New Atheists who have said that they are attacking arguments that are strawmen, because no one uses those arguments anymore. Everyone has moved on to new arguments.
If that's so, then what are the new arguments? If not, then critics should stop claiming that New Atheists are addressing the wrong arguments, and instead say that they're addressing the right arguments, but doing so incorrectly.
Isaiah 17:1: The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
> Nameless Cynic: You know that Damascus is still an active, thriving city, right?
I'm not seeing "never will be rebuilt" here, though. I do know that it is claimed to be the longest continually-inhabited city, but such statements are difficult to prove in archaeology.
But as I said before, grant all the errors and contradictions, I still think I can make my case.
If Epicurus, if Demosthenes, if anyone makes a testable statement such as "Babylon will not be rebuilt," and people continually fail in various attempts to do this, we have to do a double-take.
If the person doing this claims to be God, we have to check further. It would be a good item on the resume.
"Present your case," says the Lord. "Set forth your arguments," says Jacob's King. "Bring in to tell us what is going to happen, tell us what the future holds, so we may know that you are gods. I have stirred up one from the north, and he comes. Who told of this from the beginning, so we could know, or beforehand, so we could say, 'He was right'? No one told of this, no one foretold it, no one heard any words from you.
(Isa 41:21-26 NIV, excerpted)
Steve LaBonne,
"As has been pointed out multiple times in this thread, you may think this, but it's known to be false. (And this is not a small point because quantum fluctuations cause "something" to arise, uncaused, from "nothing" ALL THE FRICKING TIME.) So your "argument", if you have one, never even gets off the ground.
If that's the best you can do I will not bother to respond to you further."
That might be best, since it seems that you haven't managed to read even one of my comments all the way through, since in the comment you replied to I flat-out said that I would address QM in another comment. Thus, bringing it back in here clearly shows that you didn't read it.
I think it's a waste of both of our time for me to make comments based on what you say and you to make comments based on only reading half -- if that -- of what I say.
You're going to "address" something of which you just finished disclaiming knowledge?
At this point I think it's clear verbosestoic is just trolling. Bye.
verbosestoic: "Because mutations play a large role in evolution, for example, how could we tell either in the fossil record or in studies today whether a mutation was "randomish" or a deliberate tweak? Since specific organisms' or groups' mating can have a large impact, how could we rule out some force that deliberately tweaked attraction so that those matings happened? So in most cases, my reply is "We don't have enough data yet, and probably won't be able to get it" for these questions. On both sides."
You're wrong here. First, we know a lot of how mutations work and we know what causes them: virus, radiation, ENU, sloppy DNA replication, etc. Most are neutral in their effects and happily accumulate in the genome leading to greater genetic diversity. Many of the obviously apparent ones are deleterious, as in birth defects.
"some force that deliberately tweaked attraction so that those matings happened?"
Yes, we call that force natural selection.
We've seen and recorded both large and small scale evolution in the lab and in the field. There has never been any evidence for directed evolution or directed mutationism. It'd be very obvious to distinguish a naturally occurring mutation from a divinely driven one. So it's not a matter of not looking, it's a matter of looking and not finding. What reason do you have to assume that it occurred in the history of life? There's certainly no evidence for it and thousands of published scientific papers that rule it out.
Your argument here amounts to pure speculation disconnected from all reality.
Almost-Atheist says something like this ...
The challenge for the fairyist thus becomes to provide a full explication of the concept of fairies that is without self-contradiction, and hence to prove that fairies necessarily exists. The challenge for the a-fairyist is to show that such is impossible, that the concept is self-contradictory and hence that fairies cannot exist.
Does this make any sense to anyone? I don't believe in fairies. Why should the burden of proof be on me to prove that fairies cannot exist?
I can never prove that negative. Does that mean that I need to be careful about swinging a shovel at the bottom of my garden?
Steve Long, life and consciousness are properties of the Universe in that we have them and we are part of the Universe. It doesn't follow, however, that the universe possesses these qualities independent of us. Our consciousness is biological; the product of a brain and nervous system. It is a completely unwarranted leap to concluded that the entire universe, lacking these features, should exhibit consciousness. That's not a remotely logical conclusion.
@verbosestoic:
The test of whether or not QM is enough is quite simple. Is the sum total of matter and energy in the universe 0?
Virtual particles have been measured. How is it that they aren't contingent?
Dan L.,
"In talking to Martin and Eric and in the bit quoted from verbose_stoic above, there seems to be a very definitive sense in which they use terms like "exists," "causes," "explanation," etc."
Yes, we do. That means, of course, that if you're going to address any of our arguments you have to put in the effort to understand what we mean by that to see if you're using the same concept as we are, and so to see if your arguments address our concerns. What some atheists lack, in my opinion, is that. This isn't uncommon; this sort of thing happens frequently. But some of the atheists when they hit that point want to dismiss out of hand the comments, instead of trying to work to convince them that either the arguments work against their concepts or that the original concepts are wrong.
"It seems to me that arguments like first cause rely on outdated Aristotelian notions of causality, existence, etc. and haven't come to terms with the results of empirical science that discredit Aristotelian metaphysics and ontology. "
You might be right. The QM arguments raised here might well overturn that. Or, they might not. How do we settle it?
"But the important part is, I don't need to be able to come up with an example. I'm not arguing that "There is no God." I'm simply arguing AGAINST the proposition "There is a God." Theists and atheists are not making equivalent claims. I don't need to assent to any particular explanation for the universe to reject god as an explanation. "
The problem is that the accomodationists that are going after some atheists and myself are, in fact, not arguing that there is a God (or that we know there is a God) EITHER. They and I are saying that some of the supposed counter-arguments misinterpret the original arguments and don't work. So, where would come the extra burden of proof for them?
Anonymous,
"OK. For sake of argument, let's allow that. There was a first cause that existed necessarily.
Now explain why it's the Christian God, or a god at all, or gods, or anything supernatural, or anything even complex. "
I actually explicitly stated that that argument alone isn't enough ... and that I'm not convinced by the arguments either way. To summarize, we need more work and more data.
@verbosestoic: "You might be right. The QM arguments raised here might well overturn that. Or, they might not. How do we settle it?"
The better question is why DOESN'T it? There are demonstrated events without cause; a single example is sufficient to disprove "All events have a cause". Until there is a demonstration that this is an invalid interpretation(not words, not sophistry, EVIDENCE), it holds.
Steve Long:
"My main point is that life and consciousness are not separate and distinct from the properties and attributes of the universe itself or the laws of physics. They must be attributes else we could not have them. My analogy may have been poorly worded, but I think the main point is valid."
Your point was that since humans have conscious awareness so must the universe via a poorly worded analogy.
I don't see how you can go from your material reductionism above (which I agree with) to some Buddhist version of universal conciseness. Or rather I do see how you try to do it and I, and most philosophers, don't consider analogies a valid point.
universal conciseness
If only. ;)
kumarei,
At this point, you're expecting a great deal more unity than you can expect. Some will say that they don't even understand the old arguments (I do that). Some will say that they don't understand newer updated thinking on them. For this one, David B. Hart a while ago made a point about contingency in reply to Dawkins, and got dismissed, but it might be a point that what contingency means has been updated. These would also apply to "The Problem of Evil", where our views of morality are now different and so might strengthen or weaken the case.
And then there will be people who have come up with new arguments and think they're good ones. Many of them will be wrong and pretty much out there. I share the criticisms of at least some atheists of some of the more esoteric ones, like that one person who I only remember as Karen who has the argument about a very vague spiritual god and am skeptical about Swinburne's argument about electrons.
Ultimately, though, all the objections are fair in some cases and might be unfair in others. I like seeing the new arguments, but am skeptical that any of them will work. But that doesn't stop me from chiding some atheists who dismiss them unfairly.
sqlrob,
"The test of whether or not QM is enough is quite simple. Is the sum total of matter and energy in the universe 0?"
And if we well and truly had nothing, would there BE any matter and energy in the universe? If it WAS 0 -- which would be implied by nothing, no matter how this balances -- would any of the QM stuff work?
That being said, my favourite answer for a necessary thing scientifically is energy, since thermodynamics says that it can't be created or destroyed. Sounds pretty necessary to me. Now, of course, since WE'RE technically energy and intelligent, we still have to settle the intelligent question before we can rule out a god.
"Virtual particles have been measured. How is it that they aren't contingent?"
From wiki: "Virtual particles can be thought of as coming into existence as quantities, such as the electric field, fluctuate around their expectation values as required by quantum mechanics."
I agree that these would be contingent, but I'd also that they are caused by the fluctuations of those quantities. This says nothing about real particles, of course, but it does not seem unreasonable to say that virtual particles are clearly contingent but clearly caused. It would be debatable, though ...
" ... a single example is sufficient to disprove "All events have a cause". "
But even if that really was true, is that sufficient to say that therefore all contingent THINGS don't need a cause, and you can get something from nothing?
"Until there is a demonstration that this is an invalid interpretation(not words, not sophistry, EVIDENCE), it holds."
Alternatively, one can argue that the fact that it would make contingent things uncaused which cannot be the case by definition counts against that interpretation; that interpretation cannot be correct because it leads to a contradictory result.
Dismissing that concern as sophistry and demanding evidence instead only means that you and whomever you're talking to will be guaranteed to keep talking past each other.
The chances of Babylon being rebuilt are far far less than the odds of betting on black 33 and winning.
@HH & gillt
Well, I am making a leap here because I'm a left-brain artistic type and I have no problem combining Spinozist pan-deism with Buddhist universal consciousness, but it seems to me that an object (in this case the universe) cannot pass an attribute (life and consciousness) to a child object (in this case the very first life) unless that parent object possesses that attribute in and of itself.
If I try to do that when I write object-oriented programming code, I get all sorts of errors from the compiler: Life is not a property of the universe
Perhaps (I did address some of the theories in cosmology in my coment) ... but why should we think that what cosmology would consider something is really all the somethings there are? You're doing the same thing you chide theists for doing: taking a mostly invented concept and applying it as if it was held universally, even though you have no idea if it does.
You seem to be missing a really important part of scientific epistemology -- a skeptic does not, a priori, constrain the sorts of "somethings" or entities he or she is willing to entertain as a causal explanation. The criticism that naturalists will only consider things that are natural and thus their arguments are circular is simply ill-founded -- we're always willing to entertain "somethings" that are entirely unlike the "somethings" we were willing to consider beforehand.
"Cosmology" cannot consider "somethings" at all. "Cosmology" is an abstract noun, signifying a particular scientific culture. The members of that culture might have biases towards considering certain entities at the expense of others, but the culture itself is not thus constrained, as should be obvious by the fact that almost all of modern cosmology is based on notions of time, space, and energy that are less than 100 years old.
When you suggest that there are certain entities or phenomena that naturalists by assumption won't accept as causal explanations, you're synthetically constraining what "naturalism" means. That's your problem, not ours.
-Dan L.
verbosestoic: "Now, of course, since WE'RE technically energy and intelligent, we still have to settle the intelligent question before we can rule out a god."
I have no idea why you keep singling out intelligence as if it were a distinct property in the universe?
"I actually explicitly stated that that argument alone isn't enough"
Indeed.
This is a thread about good arguments for the existence of god.
So, we're agreed we can rub all the 'prime mover' stuff off the whiteboard. What's next?
"it seems to me that an object (in this case the universe) cannot pass an attribute (life and consciousness) to a child object (in this case the very first life) unless that parent object possesses that attribute"
I have a match and a pile of straw. Neither has the property of 'being on fire'. Yet I want to set fire to the straw. I guess I'll have to pray to (a specific version of) the Christian God.
Yes, we do. That means, of course, that if you're going to address any of our arguments you have to put in the effort to understand what we mean by that to see if you're using the same concept as we are, and so to see if your arguments address our concerns. What some atheists lack, in my opinion, is that.... You might be right. The QM arguments raised here might well overturn that. Or, they might not. How do we settle it?
I don't agree with you here. If you want to use notions of causality and existence to justify an argument for God, you have to show those notions are well-founded. I'm not claiming to know what it means by "exist" or "cause," I'm not claiming to know whether QM overturns Aristotelian notions of the same.
But it seems to me that it at least casts doubt on the traditional philosophical notions of existence and causes. If you're not willing to take into account the latest empirical data we have on how the universe is put together, then why should I take your metaphysics or ontology seriously at all?
Is there any serious religious metaphysics or ontology trying to defend the notions of "cause" or "existence" in the face of modern physics? If so, can you point me to it? I'm not sure what I gain by learning about notions of existence and causality that predate our best scientific evidence about those very notions.
-Dan L.
anecdotally speaking, right after fundamentalist Christians, it's the engineers and programmers who have the hardest time with biology. Why is that?
And that's what we have, a very misguided understanding of what life and consciousness are. Please wiki abiogenesis and cognitive neuroscience.
If you're looking for more I recommend Joseph LeDoux's two books, "The Self: from soul to brain" and my personal favorite "Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are"
If you enjoy a little math, Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" is awesome.
Steve Long:
"If I try to do that when I write object-oriented programming code, I get all sorts of errors from the compiler: Life is not a property of the universe"
I think you're misunderstanding programming concepts. The parent-child relationship in object oriented programming is an "is a" relationship. Thus, human would inherit from mammal, because "human is a mammal".
In fact, child objects almost always have properties that aren't in the parent, as they are meant to be more specific versions of the parent. I think you may want to take OOP 101 again.
John A. Davidson says,
Whether God or Gods now exist is of no consequence. What is mandatory is that one or more supernatural entities must have once existed.
You're in the wrong thread. This one is for "sophisticated" arguments that haven't been refuted more than a century ago.
You should be posting in one of the threads that has "IDiots" in the title.
It's because we study programming, not biology.
I think you're misunderstanding programming concepts. The parent-child relationship in object oriented programming is an "is a" relationship. Thus, human would inherit from mammal, because "human is a mammal".
No, I'm saying universe->proto-life->cellular life->(all in between stuff)->mammal->human. Still a relationship between universe->human. Just very far removed with a lot of specialization.
@Steve Long:
Try this: is the electromagnetic field an attribute of the universe? A property of the universe? An object within the universe? A subset of the universe? None of the above?
And the all important, "How do you know that?"
-Dan L.
Dan L.,
"You seem to be missing a really important part of scientific epistemology -- a skeptic does not, a priori, constrain the sorts of "somethings" or entities he or she is willing to entertain as a causal explanation. The criticism that naturalists will only consider things that are natural and thus their arguments are circular is simply ill-founded -- we're always willing to entertain "somethings" that are entirely unlike the "somethings" we were willing to consider beforehand."
I never argued this, and only argue this when the atheist in question really does refuse to consider a "something" because it isn't natural. I don't actually find the natural/supernatural debate of interest at all, mostly because naturalists can't come up with a definition of natural that's either even remotely plausible and meaningful that would actually rule out anything that is normally considered supernatural.
"Cosmology" cannot consider "somethings" at all. "Cosmology" is an abstract noun, signifying a particular scientific culture. The members of that culture might have biases towards considering certain entities at the expense of others, but the culture itself is not thus constrained, as should be obvious by the fact that almost all of modern cosmology is based on notions of time, space, and energy that are less than 100 years old."
This is nice and all, but I WAS replying to someone who explicitly stated that the cosmological theories stated that all the somethings were contingent. Thus, that person is CLEARLY stating that this matters and I'm quite reasonably asking him why he thinks that.
"When you suggest that there are certain entities or phenomena that naturalists by assumption won't accept as causal explanations, you're synthetically constraining what "naturalism" means. That's your problem, not ours."
I guess it would be ... if I was doing that. But I'm not. I'm simply replying to his contention that the cosmological theories have settled what "somethings" there are. Ultimately, my reply is essentially positing one of two potential cases:
1) Cosmology is WRONG about the somethings; there are somethings missing that the cosmological theories don't yet include.
2) The cosmological definition isn't what is being used in the argument. It might be right for cosmology, but as a technical term in that field its definition cannot be automatically used in any other.
None of these are me imposing anything. I'm literally just asking why I should accept the cosmological theories as being conclusive, and he clearly at least seems to be saying that they're important, if not conclusive.
Steve Long said "...but it seems to me that an object (in this case the universe) cannot pass an attribute (life and consciousness) to a child object (in this case the very first life) unless that parent object possesses that attribute in and of itself."
Yeah, the thing is we see emergent properties all the time. For instance, water possesses the attribute "wetness," but neither of its constituent molecules hydrogen or oxygen do.
gillt,
"I have no idea why you keep singling out intelligence as if it were a distinct property in the universe?"
I'm not aware that I am so doing. I consider that we can identify intelligence, and that we can classify things as intelligent, and that intelligence relates in some ways to actions (which is how we classify them). I'm not sure what it would mean to consider it a distinct property or not. What precisely are you objecting to?
I don't actually find the natural/supernatural debate of interest at all, mostly because naturalists can't come up with a definition of natural that's either even remotely plausible and meaningful that would actually rule out anything that is normally considered supernatural.
Uh...that's the thing. We're not ruling ANYTHING out as "supernatural." We don't WANT to define "supernatural" because that would rule out certain kinds of explanations, and we don't want to do that. We're asking you guys to define "supernatural" such that it's differentiable from "natural." We don't think there is any such thing as the supernatural until it's defined and pointed out. Again, your problem, not ours.
Are there any reasons to think that every fact about the universe isn't contingent? I'd love to hear it. For example, most arguments against atheism depend on the very notion that the entire universe is contingent -- that it might not have existed (and thus, needs a cause or an explanation in order to exist). Can this actually be supported?
-Dan L.
Steve Long:
As far as I'm concerned, the relationship you constructed does not hold true, because it implies the following:
"a human is a mammal is a ... is a cellular life is a proto-life is a universe"
The only section of that that makes sense is "a human is a mammal", and that's only because you constructed it wrong for the pattern you were going for. In the pattern you were making, it should have been "a human is a human ancestor," which is just wrong.
As I said, parent child relationships in OOP are not analogues for actual parent child relationships, they are analogues for "is a" relationships. They are parent child relationships in the context of parent and child sets, not actual ancestor items.
Dave asks,
Is there a way to organize the comments so we have the arguments and comments on them. The sea of comments is quite difficult to parse.
Blogger doesn't have threading in the comments and doesn't even number the comments. I know, this makes it very difficult to find and discuss the very sophisticated arguments for the existence of God.
Let me help you out ....
There aren't any.
SURPRISE!!!!
I was thinking of starting separate postings for many of the common versions of stupidity like the Cosmological Argument, The Ontological Argument, The Fine Tuning Argument, The Argument from Personal Experience, etc.
It would be nice if I could put up a separate posting for all the modern sophisticated arguments that us know-nothings never knew existed.
Waiting ...
Steve Long:
"It's because we study programming, not biology."
And yet here you are at a biology blog.
@ verbosestoic,
I can't make sense of this statement:
"Now, of course, since WE'RE technically energy and intelligent, we still have to settle the intelligent question before we can rule out a god."
What do you mean we are energy and intelligence?
Do you not agree the mind is what the brain does?
Professor Davison presented above his concise critique of Darwinism that I fully agree with. There is no scintilla of evidence that macromutation is micromutation extrapolated.
It is revealing that no one has answered. Atheists hang on their darwinism(which they call lofty as "evolutionary theory") as hypnotized. They think that mutation of viruses is the same process as mutation of a fish.
Just give a fish long time to mutate under selective pressure and voila - it becomes a man!
Would you believe it? You wouldn't, unless you are an "evolutionary biologist" of course.
Yes, I understand that I am saying that proto-life is a universe. I am saying that life is an emergent property inherited from the universe under proper circumstances. That's what I said when I said the universe is the master pattern from which everything flows.
I guess the reason I say this is because I see an overall pattern that makes sense to me. If I project that the universe has a consciousness and that consciousness must be unbiased due to its eternal nature, then I see the advance of science and reason as the advance, the evolution, of an unbiased consciousness on the part of mankind and I see a pattern of reproduction a pattern of life. I see the teachings of the Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu and Spinoza as advancing that reason and unbiased consciousness.
I find in my own self the experience of joy that accompanies the pursuit of an unbiased consciousness, the leaving behind of self-interest and the control of others. I find in that experience, fulfillment. That experience reinforces my pattern sense.
So if you want to say "AH-HA!", he resorts to experience, then yes, I resort to experience. However, truth is discovered only through experience, even in science.
Dan L.,
"Uh...that's the thing. We're not ruling ANYTHING out as "supernatural." We don't WANT to define "supernatural" because that would rule out certain kinds of explanations, and we don't want to do that. We're asking you guys to define "supernatural" such that it's differentiable from "natural." We don't think there is any such thing as the supernatural until it's defined and pointed out. Again, your problem, not ours."
I've gone over this on my blog before, but in a nutshell you're arriving late to a debate and changing the rules. In the beginning, natural had a clear definition that had clear implications, and so what was supernatural came from that. Thus, ghosts were considered supernatural because they were purported to be immaterial, precognition violated causation, and so forth. But as science progressed, it discovered -- as you've essentially noted -- that things didn't fit into the so-called "natural laws" that they thought were immutable. So, they updated the laws. But the natural/supernatural distinction in terms of what WAS classified as natural or supernatural remained; people still think that ghosts are supernatural and tables are natural.
Now, fast-forward to you. You're asking people who believe in these supernatural things (gods, ghosts, precognition, etc) to demonstrate how their things are different from "natural" things. Except, well, they can't, because the rules have changed. But that doesn't mean anything for the existence of ghosts or gods or precognition; all it means is that if they exist, they're natural by the new and completely uninteresting definition of natural that you've discovered.
It's not the fault of supernaturalists that you've defined the term out from under them but want to maintain the idea that the things that were considered supernatural are still extraordinary in a meaningful way.
(And I'm not a supernaturalist, so it's not my problem. I'm neither because, as I said, I think the term natural is so ill-defined that it's not possible to call something supernatural, but that that means nothing for ghosts or gods or ...).
"Are there any reasons to think that every fact about the universe isn't contingent? I'd love to hear it. For example, most arguments against atheism depend on the very notion that the entire universe is contingent -- that it might not have existed (and thus, needs a cause or an explanation in order to exist). Can this actually be supported?"
The multiverse theory definitely means that this universe is contingent and that it might not have existed. I have already conceded the possibility of the universe not being contingent, so your objection doesn't really apply to me so I can't really defend it. That being said, you will need to define universe as a thing to discuss whether it is contingent or not, as opposed to just a name for the set of all things that exist.
If I project that the universe has a consciousness and that consciousness must be unbiased due to its eternal nature, then I see the advance of science and reason as the advance, the evolution, of an unbiased consciousness on the part of mankind and I see a pattern of reproduction a pattern of life.
Steve, the problem is not that you're working from experience. It's that no one knows how to even begin to make sense of the above. What is an "unbiased consciousness"? Every instance of consciousness I've ever experienced is biased in some way or other. What does it mean to be an eternal consciousness? Every instance of consciousness I've ever seen is bounded in time. What do you even mean by consciousness here? It's just not clear.
I don't want to immediately dismiss such talk as "meaningless," but you do have some work to do to make it meaningful.
-Dan L.
VMartin: "Just give a fish long time to mutate under selective pressure and voila - it becomes a man! Would you believe it? You wouldn't, unless you are an "evolutionary biologist" of course."
Listen creotard, no evolutionary biologist believes that. Fish are on a completely separate evolutionary trajectory than mammals. However, we do share a common ancestor.
gillt,
"What do you mean we are energy and intelligence?"
Well, we can be classified as intelligent, correct? So that's settled (I never said intelligence in my statement, you'll not, but instead said intelligent). As for energy, unless I'm misunderstanding Einstein -- and I am not a physicist, so I might be -- matter is essentially a form of energy and can be converted from one to the other. Since we're made of matter, we're also essentially energy. Thus, something that's a form of energy can be intelligent, so something that is energy at least could be intelligent (but need not be).
"Do you not agree the mind is what the brain does?"
Let's not change terms. I completely disagree that intelligence can be defined as what is done by a brain, since I think that AI is possible and so computers could be intelligent. Thus, I definitely will deny that if something doesn't have a brain it can't be intelligent.
Is that what you were going for?
Steven Long: "So if you want to say "AH-HA!", he resorts to experience, then yes, I resort to experience. However, truth is discovered only through experience, even in science."
I was just about to say, we do not arrive at scientific truths through our own subjective and emotional experience, nor does speculation based on such experience count as evidence for or against something.
Science doesn't progress on any single person's subjective experience. Progress in science is measured by reproducibility of data from controlled experiments. By this I mean controlling for, among other things, personal bias, which you seem to have in spades.
You're asking people who believe in these supernatural things (gods, ghosts, precognition, etc) to demonstrate how their things are different from "natural" things. Except, well, they can't, because the rules have changed. But that doesn't mean anything for the existence of ghosts or gods or precognition; all it means is that if they exist, they're natural by the new and completely uninteresting definition of natural that you've discovered.
I think you're wrong that it's completely uninteresting. Defining "natural" as "causally efficacious" hamstrings the whole "questions science can't answer" gambit. If "natural" simply means "causally efficacious," then to qualify as "supernatural," something has to be by definition incomprehensible or unobservable, in which case "supernatural" just means "unknowable by definition."
You're right that it doesn't rule out gods, ghosts, or precognition as possibilities. That's not the intent of this particular argument. There are better arguments for those.
-Dan L.
Gilt
Listen creotard, no evolutionary biologist believes that. Fish are on a completely separate evolutionary trajectory than mammals. However, we do share a common ancestor.
I suppose that "common ancestor" must have had vertebra and I am surprised hearing that it was not a fish as well!
Or fish and mammals evolved vertebras independently?
Anyway professor Davison challenge has not been answered yet. The best evidence against atheism is the man himself. He simply couldn't have evolved by any natural process, not even by random mutation and natural selection!
So you see the evidence you are asking for every day before your own eyes!
Incidentally, your last post was super-presumptuous. "Showing up late?" "Changing the rules?" You think the whole debate revolves around your blog? Why should I play by your rules? Are you so certain those are the correct rules? What makes you think so?
-Dan L.
Let me define consciousness as living awareness. Simple enough? It could be a plant, a mouse or human's living awareness. Now, in human it is a complex mix of brain parts evolved for different purposes. The reptile for individual survival, the mammalian for group bonding, the human for reason.
So suppose the reptile is dominant in a particular individual and all the parts do not function in balance. That individual's consciousness could be said to be biased, unbalanced with the mammalian-group function. His consciousness and decision making process are totally about his own survival and he cares nothing about others. We would call him a sociopath.
So the balanced, unbiased mind would regard his fellow man's needs as just as important as his own needs. As you say, the natural inclination is to put one's self first, but the pursuit of the unbiased consciousness would be the pursuit of a real regard for every individual's survival.
I honestly do not think such a perfect balance is completely possible, but the pursuit is the important part.
@ verbosestoic,
I think I see the problem here. You believe, without evidence of course, that intelligence is some free-floating quality that humans and the universe and perhaps god possess and not a naturally emergent property of a sufficiently sophisticated organic brain.
If your going to continue down that road, at least acknowledge that you disagree here with evolution and all the fields of biology on which it operates.
@VMartin:
You're simply arguing from ignorance and incredulity. SHOW me that so-called "macroevolution" is impossible. Demonstrate it. Or shut up.
Don't even bother with the thermodynamics and information theory garbage, I've studied enough math and science to know better.
-Dan L.
"I suppose that "common ancestor" must have had vertebra and I am surprised hearing that it was not a fish as well!"
You're *surprised*? Damn, that changes everything. Your surprise does indeed invalidate a hundred and fifty years of evolutionary biology. Well done, we'll have to start again.
OK.
Atheists are accused of 'ignorance' because we're not au fait with something some theologian said to another theologian at some point in the last ten years. When we find out what it is, it invariably turns out it's some linguistic loophole that doesn't present any evidence for gods per se, but leaves a tiny gap where a god might live, if you define 'god' in some circular way that only applies to that argument, not any god that any human being has actually ever worshipped.
Yet ... a theist can express 'surprise' that human beings and fish have a common ancestor that is not a modern fish and we're meant to ... what? Tolerate? Respect? Not call them a pigf-cking moron? Remind me.
This is a double standard.
"the pursuit of the unbiased consciousness would be the pursuit of a real regard for every individual's survival"
Er ... no.
Even assuming your (entirely barmy) theory was right, try this for a thought experiment:
Einstein and a cow are stuck on a desert island with no food. Both are 'conscious' beings (for sake of argument), both need to eat at some point. What's the best way to maximize the survival of consciousness in this scenario?
Is it 'have a real regard for every individual's survival' or is it 'Burger night for Einstein?'.
@ VMartin,
Of course the common ancestor was a vertebrate, but that's not what you muttered. You said man and fish. The common ancestor looked more like a fish for obvious reasons, as primates didn't appear on the scene until much later.
Science doesn't progress on any single person's subjective experience.
Granted, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who's had this experience. ;)
Dan L.,
"Incidentally, your last post was super-presumptuous. "Showing up late?" "Changing the rules?" You think the whole debate revolves around your blog? Why should I play by your rules? Are you so certain those are the correct rules? What makes you think so? "
Um, the debate over natural and supernatural has been going on for hundreds of years, and the argument about there being clear violations of natural laws that defines the supernatural stretches back, at least, to David Hume. All the modern arguments are indeed late to the party, and my points about how the rules have changed for supernaturalists seems to be a clear fact. This has nothing to do with my blog, which just did the same thing I did here: summarize the ACTUAL HISTORY of the argument.
And I'm not imposing any rules. I'm pointing out where the positions started, how they evolved, and what's wrong with the current situation.
Anonymous:
"You're *surprised*? Damn, that changes everything. Your surprise does indeed invalidate a hundred and fifty years of evolutionary biology. Well done, we'll have to start again."
Niveau of darwinists here are lower than on Bathroom wall on Panda's thumb. Darwinists here do not realise that fish and mammals have vertebrae.
Or perhaps an ancient fish was not a fish? You never know a volatile newspeak of Sandwalk's darwinists (quite peculiar sort of darwinists as I can see) use to save their "150 years old theory" they even do not understand.
*---
But again - the best evidence is the man himself. He couldn't have had evolved by RM&NS, as professor Davison wrote above.
@Steve Long:
I regret to inform you that this r-complex level, mammalian emotional level and human rational level theory of brain is about thirty years out of date and also inaccurate. I know Carl Sagan discussed it in his book "The Dragons of Eden" back in the late '70s but he was wrong.
However, he was right when he said "the mind... [is] a consequence of its anatomy and physiology and nothing more"
This is a double standard.
Agreed. This thread has essentially convinced me that atheists aren't actually philosophical naifs, they simply have a different idea of how philosophy should be approached. Like verbosestoic told me, I'm not playing by "the rules."
Whose rules? This is quite like the Courtier's Reply in a way -- theists routinely demand in the middle of a discussion that the atheist isn't qualified to continue because he hasn't read X, Y, and Z. But how often do atheists make equivalent assertions, for instance insisting that a theist can't base his argument on the nature of time without reading, say, Sean Carrol's From Eternity to Here? I never see it. Atheists have to understand everything about philosophy and theology to say anything about the universe, but theists don't have to learn thing one about science or mathematics.
Can't we just acknowledge that atheists and theists are OBVIOUSLY coming from different intellectual pedigrees and stop making outrageous demands about what the other person needs to read before they're even allowed to debate? Can we make the "rules" explicit instead of playing the "gotcha" game when someone accidentally breaks them?
-Dan L.
Dan L.,
"I think you're wrong that it's completely uninteresting. Defining "natural" as "causally efficacious" hamstrings the whole "questions science can't answer" gambit. If "natural" simply means "causally efficacious," then to qualify as "supernatural," something has to be by definition incomprehensible or unobservable, in which case "supernatural" just means "unknowable by definition." "
Well, putting aside that something could be causally efficacious and yet still be unknowable (for example, in a Matrix model we might not be able to know about the Matrix but it could, obviously, impact us), there is, as far as I can tell, no currently posited supernatural thing that is not claimed to be causally efficacious. Thus, if someone says that a ghost is supernatural that's clearly not what they mean by the term -- since the definition of ghosts includes it being able to do stuff -- and so it's irrelevant to that debate. Thus, I think that it's quite uninteresting to have a definition that no concept ever references or has ever referenced. And I do think it would effectively resolve to "Anything that we know exists is natural". At which point, why should anyone care about that definition? It doesn't pick out anything that "known" and "existent" don't pick out.
In short, what would "No supernatural entities exist" (a very popular definition of "naturalist") mean under your definition? Nothing that's in principle unknowable? That's probably not true. Nothing that doesn't have any impact on the world? Well, that statement is probably also not true. It might be credible to say that things that don't -- and can't -- impact us aren't important, but not that they don't exist. Thus, at best uninteresting, and at worst meaningless.
435. John A. Davison - September 29, 2010 [Edit]
Thank you Martin.
Let the record show that Moran regards me as an idiot. That suits me just fine! That puts him in the same camp with Myers, Dembski, Elsberry and Dawkins.
It doesn’t get any better than this!
jadavison.wordpress.com
Um, the debate over natural and supernatural has been going on for hundreds of years, and the argument about there being clear violations of natural laws that defines the supernatural stretches back, at least, to David Hume.
I'm aware of this, which is why I'm wondering what "rules" you think it is that I'm changing.
-Dan L.
Steven Long: "Granted, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who's had this experience. ;)"
I know! So where's your skepticism over the fact that of all the millions of people who have described such experiences throughout all of history there is still to this day not a scintilla of verifiable evidence suggesting it's something more than delusional? We know hallucinations, sleep paralysis and schizophrenia are real.
gillt,
"I think I see the problem here. You believe, without evidence of course, that intelligence is some free-floating quality that humans and the universe and perhaps god possess and not a naturally emergent property of a sufficiently sophisticated organic brain.
If your going to continue down that road, at least acknowledge that you disagree here with evolution and all the fields of biology on which it operates."
Um, it is NOT biological fact that intelligence is an emergent property of the brain, because it isn't a fact that intelligence IS EMERGENT. That's one theory. Functionalism from Cognitive Science DENIES this, and insists that what it means to be intelligent is just having the right functions of intelligence. In humans, it MIGHT be emergent, but it might not be. These are open questions in Cognitive Science and psychology.
And, as far as I know, biology has NOT refuted ANY form of AI. Since AIs do not have brains, if they can be intelligent then intelligence is not defined as an emergent property of the brain. And again, all of this applies EVEN IF, in humans, it's just an emergent property of the brain.
I believe that classifying intelligence is basically a matter of looking at types of behaviour and how they are produced. This seems perfectly reasonable, and how we even knew that humans were or could be intelligent in the first place. What grounds do you have for denying the above?
Dan L.,
"I'm aware of this, which is why I'm wondering what "rules" you think it is that I'm changing."
Dan, that was figurative, just describing the arguments. What i meant is what I said: naturalists and supernaturalists had a clear way of determining what was and wasn't supernatural, the naturalists changed their view of natural -- ie changed the debate -- and now are trying to hold supernaturalists to THEIR arguments without acknowledging that the naturalists have changed the entire debate. That would be a figurative "changing the rules of the game halfway through".
Ultimately, completely literally, my claim is that the argument has been changed so that you can't use the old arguments anymore, nor can you interpret the supernaturalist position as being one where they can give you things that are supernatural by the new definition, since they're still using the old one, since THEY had no reason to accept it when the naturalists tried to define their position out of existence.
You are welcome John. Professor Moran uses the term "IDiot" in his each post.
Probably he consider himself to be witty, because I hope that denigration is not his only argument.
He haven´t answered you, because he probably thinks that the man is just some over-mutated ancient fish.
In that case the very existence of the man is no argument in this debate for him.
"Perhaps this universe resulted from the collision of branes. Perhaps it's the nature of non-existence to form a universe in the same sense that vacuum forms virtual particles. Perhaps a kitten in a alternate universe knocked a ball of yarn off a table and the collision created this universe."
I think you need to review the definition of the term "universe" as I was using it.
"Basically, I would like to be clearer on how you're using "exist," "cause," and "explanation.""
Well, 'existence' is notoriously difficult to define. Let's just say that X exists iff the proposition, "There is no X" is false.
Let's say that A causes B iff the absence of A, ceteris paribus, implies the absence of B.
And let's say A explains B if A answers the question, "Why is B?"
Note that explanations comprise causes, but are not limited to them. For example, if anything exists necessarily, you explain its existence by referring to that necessity -- Why does it exist? Because it is such that it couldn't not exist -- but you don't thereby attribute a cause to it.
That's just a rough way of thinking about the terms you asked about; basically, I'm using them in a way that accords with their acceptation.
Dan L.,
"Agreed. This thread has essentially convinced me that atheists aren't actually philosophical naifs, they simply have a different idea of how philosophy should be approached. Like verbosestoic told me, I'm not playing by "the rules."
Whose rules? This is quite like the Courtier's Reply in a way -- theists routinely demand in the middle of a discussion that the atheist isn't qualified to continue because he hasn't read X, Y, and Z. But how often do atheists make equivalent assertions, for instance insisting that a theist can't base his argument on the nature of time without reading, say, Sean Carrol's From Eternity to Here? I never see it. Atheists have to understand everything about philosophy and theology to say anything about the universe, but theists don't have to learn thing one about science or mathematics."
So, let me point out something that should be clear from my previous comments: I don't actually do any of what you said here.
First, it's not obvious, but if you have a different idea of how philosophy should be done, that's perfectly fine. I welcome it, actually. But I am going to -- rightfully -- get a little annoyed if you expect me to simply accept your view. This is something we need to settle, not something that can be stipulated. I suspect that we do have radically different notions of how to do it. I'd enjoy talking about them. But I'm not an idiot if I disagree with you, nor will I simply accept your view. I want to understand it so that we can see if there's anything we can talk about.
I also, you will have noted, don't demand that you read anything. I DO demand that you understand the argument you're criticizing before criticizing it, and be careful to make sure that you and the person you're arguing with are using the same concepts. In my example of Dawkins, I pointed out how he clearly didn't understand the argument he was making. But, again, I don't expect him to read anything else; I summarize the problems the best I can. Which is what I did for you over "natural/supernatural" as well.
I'd accept you telling me to read Carroll's book, as long as you made the same effort I do and tried to give a short version FIRST, and then just referred me there because he puts it better than you do. I even asked for references for the QM stuff.
If there's any rule that I think atheists sometimes break -- as well as theists and, well, pretty much everyone -- it's that the debate is too confrontational, and too much aimed at refuting, and so arguments are interpreted in the way that they can best be refuted and no time is taken to determine if the two sides are even talking about the same thing. And that's sad.
Woah, I never said intelligence is only and forever a result of the brian. However the brain is the only example we have to go on.
I in no way deny the possibility of AI at some future point way down the road. I think it's increasingly unlikely that it would be anything like human intelligence.
Functionalism is an assumption not an argument of how the brain works, more often applied to psychology and AI research. Cognitive neuroscience has little use for it.
@verbosestoic:
This is stupid. We're talking through each other. My definition of "natural" can be a tautology and still be useful for purposes of analyzing notions of existence, causality etc. Tautologies are often useful for analyzing things. Example: all of mathematics.
Basically, the idea behind the definition is that nothing is "off limits" to naturalistic epistemology (i.e. there are no "questions that science can't answer") unless you assume this to be so. If you don't assume a particular phenomenon to be either incomprehensible or unobservable, then the phenomenon in question is epistemologically indistinguishable from any other so-far unexplained natural phenomenon.
It's purpose is to demonstrate that it's NOT OBVIOUS that there are questions science can't answer. It's obviously possible, but no one can know it's true (or even probable, contra you) without assuming it to be so.
Again, I agree this does not rule out ghosts, gods, or precognition. It doesn't rule out anything as you keep pointing out. That is exactly the point, that if someone wants to argue that science is incapable of studying a particular phenomenon, the onus is on that person to explain why.
-Dan L.
Larry
I will let one of my sources speak for me.
"Those who consider that all the strange course of evolution is the result of an accident, or a series of accidents, are quite at liberty to think so. I believe there is a Plan, and though in the slow course of evolution there have been ups and downs, and what look like mistakes, the plan has gone on; and we may feel sure that it cannot fail to reach its goal."
Robert Broom,Finding the Missing Link, page 101.
If you feel I am an idiot then so must you think Robert Broom, Otto Schindewolf, Richard B. Goldschmidt, Pierre Grasse, William Bateson and Leo Berg must be idiots as well. Those are the sources who led me to my conclusions, some of the greatest biologists of the post-Darwin era, not one of whom was an atheist or religious fanatic.
I am through here.
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
jadavison.wordpress.com
See thread. See thread jump. See thread jump the shark.
"Functionalism is an assumption not an argument of how the brain works, more often applied to psychology and AI research. Cognitive neuroscience has little use for it."
To get this down to brass tacks, if we're debating the possibility of an intelligent creator being, do you think we should use the Cognitive neuoscience approach, or the AI/psychology approach? If it's possible that things without brains can be intelligent, then I think clearly the latter, no?
If there's any rule that I think atheists sometimes break -- as well as theists and, well, pretty much everyone -- it's that the debate is too confrontational, and too much aimed at refuting, and so arguments are interpreted in the way that they can best be refuted and no time is taken to determine if the two sides are even talking about the same thing. And that's sad.
Agreed. And I will readily acknowledge that you haven't tried to send me off to the library, this is really one of the best discussions I've had along these lines; I don't mean to criticize you specifically.
The "changing the rules" thing threw me for a loop, basically because I don't think that's a reasonable historical description of the shift in the supernatural/natural debates.
I don't think it's a given, for example, that "naturalists and supernaturalists had a clear way of determining what was and wasn't supernatural" was ever a true statement. I think it would be much more accurate to say, "by trying to find a clear way to distinguish natural and supernatural, naturalists ultimately came to realize the division was entirely synthetic" or something along those lines.
And I hope my last post was clear that I don't use the argument to try to pull a gotcha on supernaturalists by changing the rules. I use the argument to clarify what could possibly be meant by "natural" or "supernatural." You may think such clarification is uninteresting, but I simply disagree.
-Dan L.
Dan L.,
"This is stupid. We're talking through each other. My definition of "natural" can be a tautology and still be useful for purposes of analyzing notions of existence, causality etc. Tautologies are often useful for analyzing things. Example: all of mathematics."
The problem is that I don't see your definition as being useful for analyzing anything. My argument is less that it's useless because it's a tautology and more that it's useless because it's a tautology that combines other concepts that we ALREADY HAVE. Why is natural more useful for talking about existence than the concept of existence ITSELF? Why is it more useful for talking about causation than just using THAT concept? I don't see it, and you haven't provided any examples.
Now, it MIGHT be useful for trying to settle the "Can science study it example?" except that it doesn't seem to obviously be the case that science studies everything or can study everything that's causally efficacious. To settle this, we aren't going to appeal to your definition of natural, we have to look at what commitments the scientific method has. Some may say that there are no such problematic commitments. But there may well be. Larry Moran has stated that science must be rational, evidence-based, and skeptical. Can skepticism rule out certain beliefs? I think it can. Could those things be causally efficacious? I think so. Is that really a commitment of science? That's the job of philosophy of science. But it really isn't obvious that science can study everything, even if we accepted your statement.
"It's purpose is to demonstrate that it's NOT OBVIOUS that there are questions science can't answer. It's obviously possible, but no one can know it's true (or even probable, contra you) without assuming it to be so."
I didn't argue this, nor did anything I say imply that it is probable that science can't study something. At best, I refused to grant science privilege in some areas by refusing to accept something just 'cause science said so. I think things like the definition of causation are things that maybe science doesn't get privilege in defining. I could be wrong. But that's something that needs to be settled, not merely asserted.
I know! So where's your skepticism over the fact that of all the millions of people who have described such experiences throughout all of history there is still to this day not a scintilla of verifiable evidence suggesting it's something more than delusional? We know hallucinations, sleep paralysis and schizophrenia are real.
So you're saying something as simple as joy and love are delusional? That joy and love are dysfunctions? That's the only benefit I'm ascribing to my hypothetical unbiased consciousness. And yes, I've been busy programming for the last 30 years, so substitute whatever brain function you think is correct for the part of the brain that puts the needs of the individual above those of the group and the individual of the group.
Also, there is no need to include a cow in the survival group. Einstein is free to make his own choice about burgers. Survival groups are homogeneous. I'd be happy if we could get all humans included in the survival group.
Well, 'existence' is notoriously difficult to define. Let's just say that X exists iff the proposition, "There is no X" is false.
Totally circular. You're substituting "is" for "exists." As far as I can tell, they mean the same thing.
Let's say that A causes B iff the absence of A, ceteris paribus, implies the absence of B.
The absence of eyes implies the absence of the color green. But is it eyes that cause the color green or green light? Causality is much more complicated than allowed by this definition.
And let's say A explains B if A answers the question, "Why is B?"
Way too vague. I tend to think "why" questions are inherently ambiguous. At any rate, it's unclear what would qualify as an explanation for something simple like "why is there lightning"? Do I simply need to account for the possibility of lightning (i.e. an electric discharge through a gaseous medium) or do I have to account for the specific fact of lightning (i.e. trace out the causal history of the conditions on earth that allow for lightning)?
That's just a rough way of thinking about the terms you asked about; basically, I'm using them in a way that accords with their acceptation.
Not sure what you mean by "acceptation." You mean the way they've been used for more than a hundred years? Why should I think that other people using them makes them automatically valid or well-founded concepts?
-Dan L.
Some may say that there are no such problematic commitments. But there may well be. Larry Moran has stated that science must be rational, evidence-based, and skeptical. Can skepticism rule out certain beliefs? I think it can. Could those things be causally efficacious? I think so. Is that really a commitment of science? That's the job of philosophy of science. But it really isn't obvious that science can study everything, even if we accepted your statement.
I don't think skepticism can a priori rule out any beliefs -- in fact, that's essentially my definition of "skepticism": the refusal to rule out any beliefs a priori.
Again, I never argued that it was obvious that science could study everything given my argument. I was arguing that it's NOT OBVIOUS that it CAN'T. Which I said explicitly and you acknowledged. I understand that you weren't arguing otherwise. Other people do. You don't argue with those people so you don't think it's interesting. I do, so I do think it's interesting.
So what's the problem here? We're saying the same thing -- it's possible but not obvious that there are questions that science can't answer. Ghosts, gods, and precognition, if they exist, are acceptable under the working definition of "natural." We're not actually in disagreement about anything but how useful the argument is, which is probably just a function of the sorts of arguments you encounter vs. the ones I do.
-Dan L.
Well, my posting this over at CAF seems to have been something of a mistake, as it's just degenerated into a slanging match (albeit a fairly amusing one).
The strongest contender so far seems to be Scotus. I've tried to read it, but to be honest I couldn't make head or tail of it due to its archaic prose and (possibly standard) philosophical terminology.
It seems though, to be a dressed up Cosmological argument. Can anyone comment?
@verbosestoic:
I am little confused why you would think science wouldn't be privileged in having something to say about causality. To me, it seems causality would be inextricably tied to natural law, which is nominally the object of scientific investigation. Do you think we could understand causality purely through introspection without reference to an external world? If so, how would you argue for such a claim?
-Dan L.
verbosestoic: "To get this down to brass tacks, if we're debating the possibility of an intelligent creator being, do you think we should use the Cognitive neuoscience approach, or the AI/psychology approach? If it's possible that things without brains can be intelligent, then I think clearly the latter, no?"
I think we should use whatever approach is grounded in evidence.
You moved away from arguments for the existence of god to assertions over hypothetical intelligences.
I find this line of speculating way off-topic. This is a science blog; your arguments cannot be free of or counter to available evidence.
"Totally circular. You're substituting "is" for "exists." As far as I can tell, they mean the same thing."
First, every definition is circular in one sense, well, *by definition*, so calling a definition circular isn't exactly a criticism. What you have to show is that the definition adds no new information. It seems to me that the definition I offered did add something, and didn't merely provide another way of saying "exists."
Second, I said that definitions of existence are notoriously difficult, and your remark has, despite the obvious problem with the 'circularity' charge, touched on the reason why: some terms are so basic that they cannot be defined without the use of synonyms, and 'existence' is one of them.
"The absence of eyes implies the absence of the color green. But is it eyes that cause the color green or green light? Causality is much more complicated than allowed by this definition."
No, I think the problem is that your conception of 'causality' is far too restrictive. I would wager that you want to limit 'causality' to efficient causation, but that's simply inadequate. If you consider a more robust conception of causality, such as one that allows for material, formal and final causes as well as efficient causes, then your counterexample is nothing of the sort.
"Way too vague. I tend to think "why" questions are inherently ambiguous. At any rate, it's unclear what would qualify as an explanation for something simple like "why is there lightning"? Do I simply need to account for the possibility of lightning (i.e. an electric discharge through a gaseous medium) or do I have to account for the specific fact of lightning (i.e. trace out the causal history of the conditions on earth that allow for lightning)?"
You're looking at this from the wrong way around, and that seems to be what's confusing you. Let's say you walk into my kitchen and see a pot of boiling water on the stove. There are a number of different *but perfectly compatible* explanations for why the water is boiling. One explanation is thermodynamic, according to which the boiling of the water is explained with reference to the excited state of the water's molecules. Another is agent based, according to which the boiling water is explained by my desire for pasta. And so on. What you see as a weakness of the "why is X" question is precisely its strength: it can account for any number of compatible accounts on all sorts of levels.
Now, as I said, these are not rigorously developed analyses of each concept, but the OP did request concision. I think they do the basic job of making the argument I presented intelligible just fine. (And I've yet to see a decent criticism of that argument.)
Steve Long: "So you're saying something as simple as joy and love are delusional? That joy and love are dysfunctions? That's the only benefit I'm ascribing to my hypothetical unbiased consciousness. And yes, I've been busy programming for the last 30 years, so substitute whatever brain function you think is correct for the part of the brain that puts the needs of the individual above those of the group and the individual of the group."
What's delusional is not the emotion per se but asserting supernatural, divine or otherwise non-parsimonious causes to it.
There's a long and rich history of alien abductions and incubus and succubi and other foul creatures visiting people in their sleep. We can affirm the subjective experience while denying the validity of any objective reality that involves demons and aliens terrorizing people.
I'm curious about this individual over group path you're going down. I'm not sure how it relates to the topic at hand and I'm certain behavior at the expense of the individual over the group has been documented in humans.
@ Martin:
"Each of the arguments you listed there have quick and easy refutations
That's a bold statement. Where, exactly?"
Wikipedia mostly. But I've put together a run-down of all of them.
Very brief summary:
- Arguments #1 and #2 require you to be lax with your modal assumptions.
- Arguments #5, #6 and #8 are unsinkable rubber ducks, rebutted ad nauseam.
- Arguments #3 and #7 are slight variations on classical arguments that are wide open to most of the classical counters.
- Argument #4 I can't find a good copy of. The version I've seen is logically broken, but that could be a copying error. I don't suppose you have a better reference?
- Argument #9 isn't actually an argument.
It seems to me that the definition I offered did add something, and didn't merely provide another way of saying "exists."...I said that definitions of existence are notoriously difficult...some terms are so basic that they cannot be defined without the use of synonyms, and 'existence' is one of them.
I'm sorry. I don't see the difference between "X is" iff not "X is not" and "X exists" iff not "X does not exist." You'll have to be more explicit about what information this definition adds. And if we can't be precise about what we mean by "exists," then we can't make any progress, because I suspect we mean very different things.
No, I think the problem is that your conception of 'causality' is far too restrictive. I would wager that you want to limit 'causality' to efficient causation, but that's simply inadequate. If you consider a more robust conception of causality, such as one that allows for material, formal and final causes as well as efficient causes, then your counterexample is nothing of the sort.
Well, I think that your definition admits or risks admitting too many phenomena that shouldn't really be thought of as "causes." I think your definition is too imprecise to be useful. I think it might be possible for A's absence to imply B's absence without A causing B, for example. And I always worry about applying "everything else being equal" to definitions of causality, because Newtonian mechanics and QM both imply huge, labyrinthine causal webs for any phenomena that don't happen on the level of individual particles. In other words, I don't think your definition is restrictive enough. At the very least, I think you have more work to do to justify such a loose definition.
You're looking at this from the wrong way around, and that seems to be what's confusing you.
I don't understand why it's necessarily me who is confused by looking at this from the wrong way around. I'm not sure what WOULDN'T qualify as an explanation under your definition, for example.
"I'm not sure what WOULDN'T qualify as an explanation under your definition, for example."
I don't quite know how to take this; are you resorting to hyperbole here, or are you being serious? For example, let A = my cat, and B = Venus (the planet).
A explains B is A answers the question, "Why is B?" (Remember the context: the term 'explanation' you're inquiring about was used in a weak formulation of the PSR, according to which what is being explained are things that exist.) Does my cat explain the existence of the planet Venus? Clearly not, so I find it hard to believe that you can't see what wouldn't count as an explanation given my account of what an explanation is (for purposes of clarifying the argument I provided on the first page of this thread).
"Well, I think that your definition admits or risks admitting too many phenomena that shouldn't really be thought of as "causes." I think your definition is too imprecise to be useful. I think it might be possible for A's absence to imply B's absence without A causing B, for example."
I think the crux of the issue is your use of the term 'should' here. Let me ask you: How would you define a cause? Perhaps if we both start with how we would each define these terms, we can more efficiently get to the issues that are preventing us from moving forward. I would also request that you provide what seems to you to be an acceptable definition of "existence" and of "explanation." In fact, I think it would be better, in terms of the progress of this conversation, if you provided those definitions before I comment further.
@Almost Atheist: "The claim (by Anonymous, in comments" that "We can conceive of 'a completely atheistic universe, one with no gods or divine involvement of any kind'" begs the question entirely. If God is logically necessary, then any conception of a universe that lacks a god will be self-contradictory at some point -- although the self-contradiction may not be obvious!"
Stuff and nonsense. The burden of proof is clearly on those who claim that the conception of a godless universe is self-contradictory to show the contradiction.
All the examples of "necessarily existent" entities other than God are purely abstract objects, without causal power - numbers, propositions, etc. There appears to be nothing logically wrong with the concept of an "empty" possible world, in which nothing at all non-abstract exists. Unless this concept (and those of all other godless possible worlds) can be shown to be self-contradictory, none of the "modal ontological arguments" can get started - and if this could be shown, then they would be redundant. - KG
> Prof. Moran: I was thinking of starting separate postings for many of the common versions of stupidity like the Cosmological Argument, The Ontological Argument, The Fine Tuning Argument, The Argument from Personal Experience, etc.
So the way to show that "Bablyon will never be rebuilt" is wrong, would be, I suppose to rebuild Babylon?
But the more people try to do this, and fail, the better it seems this argument becomes...
I know it's slightly off topic, but one of the comments hit one of my pet peeves. Yes, we evolved from fish. We evolved from monkeys, too. It's just that the species of monkey (or fish) we evolved from no longer exists, and all living monkeys (and fish) are the result millions of years of going down their own evolutionary paths.
For anyone wanting to understand evolution, I'd recommend Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters or Carl Zimmer's The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution. For anyone not willing to go to a library, the Talk Origins website is a good online resource (which I'm pretty sure John Davidson is aware of, but for the sake of anyone else coming across this).
In short, evolution does do a very good job of explaining the history of life on the planet, without needing to invoke any gods in the explanation.
(I'm not going to comment any more on evolution on this thread, as creationism certainly isn't a new argument for theism.)
Eric,
I'm not sure I can provide an adequate definition, but I'll try to show you why I'm asking for more precision.
You're aware, no doubt, that there's a long-standing argument in western philosophy about whether things like abstract objects, numbers, logical truths, and the like exist. I see other problems with traditional ontology -- the table exists in a different sense than the atoms in which it is composed, for example. Without requesting specificity for the sort of existence we're talking about, these different modes get conflated and we risk running into errors of reasoning. I don't want to make presumptions about whether you think that abstract objects, just for example, exist.
Now if existence requires an explanation, and I'm not entirely convinced that it does but I'll play along, then it seems to me at least that we need to allow different modes of explanations for different types of entities with different modes of existence. And it's not clear to me that "the universe"'s mode of existence requires or even admits "a person-like god" as an explanation.
In defining "exist" I would differentiate between a few particular modes:
(1) phenomenological/qualitative -- sights, sounds, smells, etc. -- apparently irreducible aspects of experience
(2) phenomenological/socially constructed -- much of my immediate experience involves the use of language, mathematics, and other socially constructed phenomena to organize my sensory data -- I name the blob of color on my retina as "cat" without even thinking about it
(3) material/socially constructed -- I can only infer the existence of the material world from the content of my phenomenological experience, but it seems to me the evidence is compelling. Descartes might be right, but it's hardly worth worrying about unless I can actually escape from the vat -- this is the sense in which we would say that a cat exists in the room next over (where it is outside my phenomenological experience)
(4) material/fundamental -- the sense in which the stuff, or matter, or energy, or whatever that makes up the cat exists -- if the cat dies and is cremated, the cat no longer exists, but the stuff it was made of still does in some sense.
-Dan L.
@verbosestoic: "And if we well and truly had nothing, would there BE any matter and energy in the universe? If it WAS 0 -- which would be implied by nothing, no matter how this balances -- would any of the QM stuff work?"
Yes. This one statement shows you don't understand the philosophical implications and conflate definitions left and right.
You owe John $5. You have $5 cash in your pocket.
What is your net worth?
How much money do you have in your pocket?
As for a definition of "cause," essentially it would depend on the mode of existence I was using. I might describe thunder and lightning as distinct aspects of my sensory experience in mode (1) (i.e. no clear causal connection), but in modes (2) and (3), I would say that the lightning caused the thunder -- that's part of my socially constructed concept of lightning and thunder. In mode (4), I would hesitate to use the word "cause" at all. The word "cause" is socially constructed and carries a lot of baggage. For the most part, I would talk about the implications of a successful physical theory given a particular set of initial conditions -- obviously, with the caveat that current physical theories can't (yet) account for all phenomena whose material existence has been inferred.
I'm game for switching to "explanation," but we'll need to define it relative to the different modes, and I don't want to beg the question by defining them for you.
-Dan L.
It is telling that the comment thread below a request for modern, sophisticated arguments for god, preferably arguments that have been neglected by contemporary atheist authors, so quickly deteriorated into a squabble about some of the most stupid arguments ever:
Personal religious experience - because if I feel it in my heart that I am Napoleon Bonaparte, who is to prove me wrong?;
Biblical prophecy - hooray! Among all those that were not fulfilled or are know to have been inserted into the text after the event I found one that kinda looks like it has come true if you squint a little and ignore that it happened much too late;
Word games that redefine god to be something that no sensible person will recognize as such - if you need a fancy new name for the laws of physics, why not call them Harvey instead of god?;
and (!flourish!)
There is no macroevolution, only microevolution - because you can never walk from here to another town just by taking one step after the other, oh no sir.
What. The. Heck?
I am refraining from saying "that all you got?" only because I know that isn't all they got. There actually are theologians out there who are able to dress up entirely new and exciting fallacies with so much obfuscating language that it is hard to expose the mistake, see the discussions about Swinburne elsewhere in the blogosphere.
But still, even for a comment thread below a snarky blog post, what the faithful deliver here is seriously embarrassing.
H.H.,
Garamond Lethe, the concept of god sucks as an explanatory model, so I'm not sure how declaring the question of god's actual existence irrelevant improves the case for theism in any manner.
I reproduce the first line of my comment, quoting from the original article:
The question before us is whether there is a God or there isn't.
I hadn't intended on making a case for theism. As such, I'm not too bothered that I failed to do so.
Second, I would classify religion as one of the most spectacularly successful models in human history, right up there with "tool-making". It's not clear to me that you can go from a hunter-gatherer/nomadic culture to an urban culture without it. Like the best models, we continually reformulate it to match new data, and where appropriate, we abandon it in favor of better models when those come along.
But if you don't like a model, I suppose that's sufficient to say it "sucks".
But still, I hardly think that improves the case for atheism.
K, posting anonymously, says:
So reframing religious arguments in pragmatic or instrumental terms is in itself rejection of the religious sphere & very few theists-- maybe existential or non-cognitivist theists-- are going to even participate in that sort of argument as a serious defense of their position.
I'm not that interested in what most theists think about this particular epistemic question, much like I'm not that interested in what most scientists think about atoms (physicists and chemists, yes; biologists not so much).
Nor do I think most theologians would have a problem with my response: this is an epistemic reply, not an ontological one. There's quite a bit of difference between saying we can't prove that god exists versus "god doesn't exist". Aquinas, for one, was comfortable with the former, and that may still be the position of the Catholic Church.
Observability of/public standards for atoms: A large chunk of religious evidence is based on personal revelation or feeling, for which there is little consistent standard for identifying whether or not you've had a properly religious experience and of what sort.
Oh, I very much disagree. Yes, there is a tradition of personal revelation, but there's a companion tradition that this revelation must be validated by the larger community. The common case, especially in Western tradition, makes worship a social event and the model accounts for that shared, public perception as well as more private perceptions.
2. Testability and usefulness: We have no way to systematically manipulate, experiment, or change our conditions such that certain God hypotheses might be revealed to be true or false (or pragmatically more or less useful for a broad range of purposes).
Certainly not! If your tribe conquers my tribe, that's solid empirical evidence that your gods are stronger than my gods. If I do a rain dance and the drought continues, that solid empirical evidence that I'm not doing it right (and whatever dance I do right before it rains is obviously the correct one).
What the model describes may be not be empirical, but that model is shaped to a large degree by hard evidence. (That there are better, undiscovered models out there doesn't contradict this.)
3. Purposes: If you're going to play the pragmatics card, you'd have to identify what purpose God-talk is supposed to be serving
"Fitness" works, I think (which is not a purpose, of course, but it does answer your question).
(Good post, btw.)
@Garamonde "Second, I would classify religion as one of the most spectacularly successful models in human history, right up there with "tool-making"."
The objection is that you've failed to provide any reason to believe that religion is successful. If religion is successful, what does it accomplish? Saying that it's somehow necessary for this or that to happen, without providing a clear causal link, is pretty silly.
@Steve Long I feel that atheists are sitting around saying "look, theists are wrong because of X, Y, and Z", and then you come along and say "If omnipotence and eternal self-existence are fundamental attributes of God, and I think everyone will agree with that" (which is incorrect; some people will disagree with that), then you define omnipotence such that the laws of physics qualify, then you claim we can define God in such a way that atheists believe in it too. Sorry, but redefining terms like this is not intelligent, it's just dishonest. You're weaseling your way into claiming that there's no conflict by redefining one side until it's identical to the other. It has little bearing on what most theists out there actually believe, and you are being patronizing and dishonest to them by adjusting your terms so that you look like you agree with their experience.
By the way, although I think in general love and joy are not delusions (what would that even mean?), I think that specific instances of them can be dysfunctional. MDMA can give you feelings of love and joy. People who are having strokes can experience "great love and joy". The point stands that "I had an experience" does not rule out that experience being based in delusion or dysfunction.
If I can experience sleep paralysis but recognize that the interdimensional cyborg in my closet was just a dream, why should I not expect other people to be capable of criticizing their own experiences as well?
@Garamonde Looking at your second more recent post, you seem to be saying that religion is at least good at surviving, whether or not it's particularly good for anything else. Well, that's OK, but we seem to be on a tangent away from whether theology is justified without being able to demonstrate the existence of God. What benefit accrues to an individual who studies theology, other than simply understanding what other believers think?
Garamond Lethe says,
Second, I would classify religion as one of the most spectacularly successful models in human history, right up there with "tool-making". It's not clear to me that you can go from a hunter-gatherer/nomadic culture to an urban culture without it.
I don't know whether all hunter-gather societies were religious and I don't know whether the citizens of all ancient cities were religious.
How do YOU know this?
Alex SL says,
But still, even for a comment thread below a snarky blog post, what the faithful deliver here is seriously embarrassing.
I'll take that a a compliment. Am I allowed to say "mission accomplished"?
I don't understand why we're even discussing God when the existence of a soul is pretty much entirely ruled out by modern everything. If there are no souls, there is no point to positing an afterlife (after all, without souls when you die you're gone). If there is no afterlife, what does God matter?
VMartin says,
Professor Davison presented above his concise critique of Darwinism that I fully agree with. There is no scintilla of evidence that macromutation is micromutation extrapolated.
It is revealing that no one has answered.
What's the problem? I do not believe that microevolution is sufficient to account for macroevolution [Macroevolution].
Is that the answer you were waiting for?
Eric,
Sorry if what I've given you isn't good enough. I just don't see any reason to believe that (4) has a personality, which is essentially what you are claiming.
I also don't really think the PSR is very appealing as a premise. As you can see, it's problematic applying it to my little ontology, so it's not terribly relevant to how I see the world. It seems to be that "explanations" and "causes" are limited to (2) and (3) and don't necessarily have any causal or logical power over the existence of (4). "Cause" and "explanation" are cultural constructs (words, concepts, etc.) that we use to try to make sense of what sort of (4) would be required to account for (1), (2) and (3).
You agree that a thing like (4), prior to any explanation or cause, is possible. You just insist it has a personality. I don't see how it follows.
-Dan L.
Larry Moran,
I'll take that a a compliment. Am I allowed to say "mission accomplished"?
It is one, and seems so, certainly, but it is not a week yet! By the way, I am sure looking forward to reading your summary of this experience in a few days, if you find the time.
I meant to express above that your enjoyably caustic way of dealing with the faithful may not attract enough of the more thoughtful (and thus, unfortunately, often delicate) specimens of that kind and make them comment here, so that you may get a skewed sample of the profoundness of religious justifications.
But profound or not, what I find disappointing is that there is nothing here that has not been amply refuted, nothing new, nothing that even I, as somebody quite disinterested in wading through the intricacies of theology, have not already heard of and seen exposed as hollow. The closest that was mentioned was Maydole's modal perfection ontological argument, of which I had not heard as such; but after some additional web browsing it seems to be merely a variant of Plantinga's mistake of treating separate universes as being able to influence each other, which is kinda ruled out by the "separate" part of the definition. That was not too hard, then, unless the discussion of it that I read was mistaken.
Larry
199. John A. Davison - September 17, 2010 [Edit]
My book, – “Unpublished Evolution Papers of John A. Davison” is now available for purchase from Lulu publishers.
http://www.lulu.com/buy/index.php?cid=en_tab_buy
or more directly
http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fListingClass=0&fSearch=unpublished+evolution+papers+of+John+A.+Davison
It will undergo revisions as I continue to add essays dealing with the great mystery of organic evolution.
I hope you, Paul Zachary Myers, Wesley Royce Eleberry and Clinton Richard Dawkins will all write reviews, but I doubt you will even mention that the book exists. Such has always been the Darwinian way.
Sooner or later your Godless, purposeless, infantile interpretation of the living world will reduce both the "Darwinista" and the "Fundamentalista" to pathetic little footnotes in the history of evolutionary science, the last spastic remnants of the most mindless contraversy in the history of biological thought.
"Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source... They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres."
Albert Einstein
jadavison.wordpress.com
At the very least then--even supposing we chalk-up Larry's snarky post as scaring away the more sophisticated Jesus lovers--we can at least say in good confidence that the average theist/apologist/fatheist is embarrassingly short of good arguments in support their own cherished god beliefs. Like bringing a knife to a gun fight. But then outspoken atheists already knew that.
The posts I trust most are those that manage to plug a book and also assert some sort of conspiracy. If you aren't at least going to disrespect me by trying to sell me something on here, I'm not interested. Use of "Darwinista" a plus.
My view is that the First Cause argument is the best starting point.
did you remember to eliminate special pleading?
no?
oops.
Larry says:
I don't know whether all hunter-gather societies were religious and I don't know whether the citizens of all ancient cities were religious.
How do YOU know this?
That's a rather strange question. In a different context, I'd simply say "that's the current consensus of the archaeologists who publish in the peer-reviewed literature". However, I'm a little suspicious of "all" and "know".
If I'm to interpret "all" as "those societies we know enough about to have a reasonable opinion" and "know" to mean "to the best of our current knowledge", then my initial answer stands.
If that's not what you intended, please clarify.
Timothy Insoll's "Archaeology of Cult and Religion" in Colin Renfrew's _Archaeology: The Key Concepts_ (Routledge, 2005) is a short intro to the topic and has several pointers to further reading.
Sean says
but we seem to be on a tangent away from whether theology is justified without being able to demonstrate the existence of God.
I thought we were discussing the validity of the question "Does god exist?".
The justification of mathematics does not hinge on whether or not numbers exist as platonic ideals and the justification of physics doesn't hinge on whether atoms exist as anything more than useful mathematical models describing experimental results. Why would religion be any different?
What benefit accrues to an individual who studies theology, other than simply understanding what other believers think?
That's an even stranger question. What benefits accrue to an individual who learns to play Mozart well? G. H. Hardy made a career out of creating mathematics that, in his own estimation, had no justification whatsoever.
The benefit is pride in difficult work done well.
("Understanding what other believers think" is more of a role for a sociologist or anthropologist than a theologian, btw.)
Garmanond, there are several billion people on the planet who view "god" as a real, functioning being. The basis for this belief is inevitably sophistry and ignorance.
Your assertion that "god's existence is not an interesting question" is absurd in light of the amount of conflict that very question has spawned. You will be hard pressed to find anyone who has murdered, genocided, mutilated, or abused for the sake of math or Mozart.
Your theologian's god is not the god of billions of believers.
@Gar "("Understanding what other believers think" is more of a role for a sociologist or anthropologist than a theologian, btw.)" I meant "understanding the opinions of the specific theologians you're reading". Obviously I miscommunicated. Sorry!
I thought our topic was the value of modern theology (insofar as that's what inspired the original post). In that context, you seemed to be defending theology as being potentially valuable without having to answer "Does God exist?". Apparently, however, you consider "Can we demonstrate that God exists?" to be irrelevant to the discussion?
"The benefit is pride in difficult work done well." That's the exact sort of answer I was looking for.
But I'm not satisfied with this. If someone wrote a history of something, and they simply it up, but it made an aesthetically pleasing story, or taught what were seen as valuable life lessons, I think most people would still regard it as illegitimate insofar as it was promoted as a legitimate history.
We're fine with historical fiction, or even the dialogues that Plato wrote regarding Socrates, understanding that those dialogues almost certainly could not be precise transcripts of real conversation. But when you believe that something is a "true" account of reality, you expect it to match up with any future experiences you might encounter, as well as with reasonable extrapolations from your past experiences. And I think it's proper to expect it to do so without undue effort on your own part to rationalize away contradictions.
In this sense, the question "Does God exist?" is quite meaningful. If someone does mathematics in an area that they expect will never have practical applications, or plays Mozart, they are effectively involved in entertainment as far as I am concerned. It may be quite intellectual entertainment, but that's what it is nonetheless; it's something done purely for the pleasure of doing it. If someone creates a self-consistent theology for entertainment purposes, or in order to make some form of lesson or advice more palatable in the form of a parable, that's all right with me.
But when a religious worldview makes actual claims about the world, it opens itself up to a different form of scrutiny. You say "The justification of mathematics does not hinge on whether or not numbers exist as platonic ideals and the justification of physics doesn't hinge on whether atoms exist as anything more than useful mathematical models describing experimental results. Why would religion be any different?" Well, one can ask "What does justify physics?", and I think it hinges very strongly on a combination of predictive and explanatory power. The assertion "Atoms exist" is quite meaningful in that it improves the accuracy of one's expectations of the world. I don't think homeopathy is justified, even if it works (due to the placebo effect), because the assertion "Water has memory" doesn't get you much closer to a useful picture of the world. Other explanations of the effect do much better. I'm not interested in the assertions of alchemy either, even insofar as they were based on "hard evidence" sometimes. Similarly, even if theologians enjoy theology and tell good stories or come up with beautiful theories, (and even if they modify their rain dances to accord with "evidence" post hoc), saying "God exists" doesn't improve my picture of the world as compared to saying "These are just stories or unjustified ideas." Correspondence to reality is actually a critical feature that people expect from religion, that they believe that they get from it, and which I don't think they actually get from it, even if I translate "correspondence to reality" into a pragmatic equivalent like "consistently explains and predicts observations of the outside world accurately".
In short, I can't accept that the question "Can you show God exists?" is irrelevant unless theologians themselves are willing to concede that they don't believe that the non-existence of God would have any relevance to the utility of their ideas, much like a novelist doesn't think his/her characters really exist, or perhaps more accurately, much as some mathematicians are aware that they accept strange axioms that may not correspond to real systems, and thus don't expect anyone to assume that what they demonstrate is useful for describing reality. I don't believe that most theologians would accept such a person as speaking for them, however.
Samael says
Garmanond, there are several billion people on the planet who view "god" as a real, functioning being.
And there are millions of people who think atoms are little balls, or at best tiny solar-system like things, and there are perhaps billions of people who have never heard of atoms.
How does this invalidate chemistry?
If you're not willing to take a vote to determine the best models in science, why would you do so for religion?
Your assertion that "god's existence is not an interesting question" is absurd in light of the amount of conflict that very question has spawned. You will be hard pressed to find anyone who has murdered, genocided, mutilated, or abused for the sake of math or Mozart.
It takes quite a bit of effort to find examples of religious wars. (This question comes up periodically on talk.origins --- I think the consensus there is a couple of minor European wars and that's about it.) There are plenty of wars that get dressed up in religious justifications, but scratch the surface and you'll find the real reasons are almost always economic.
Your theologian's god is not the god of billions of believers.
Yes.
"If you're not willing to take a vote to determine the best models in science, why would you do so for religion?"
Because "god" in whatever conception, is a fictional being with no basis in reality. Is the Easter Bunny similarly not up for vote, or does every myth get a free pass?
"It takes quite a bit of effort to find examples of religious wars. (This question comes up periodically on talk.origins --- I think the consensus there is a couple of minor European wars and that's about it.) There are plenty of wars that get dressed up in religious justifications, but scratch the surface and you'll find the real reasons are almost always economic."
That's nice. Good thing that I never mentioned war. Believers do enough damage by institutionally raping children, burning women alive for being women, and trying to annihilate various ethnic, religious and political groups, all without actual warfare.
Atoms, as opposed to gods, can actually be observed and detected. We may use shortcuts like the Bohr model to imagine how they work, but the important bits are in the math, and not how we imagine them working. Moreover, atoms don't go away when people stop believing in them, which I imagine was much the case between Epicurus and atomic theories (relatively) modern revival. Gods, on the other hand, do disappear.
I recommend "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
The very last paragraph is especially significant with regard to the challenge which Larry presented here -
"The self-imposed historical amnesia of the West today cannot undo the past or the Church's central role in building Western civilization. 'I am not a Catholic,' wrote French philosopher Simone Weil,'but I consider the Christian idea which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.' That is a lesson that Western civilization, cut off more and more from its Catholic foundations, is in the process of learning the hard way."
jadavison.wordpress.com
I also recommend my own published take on the challenge that Larry has presented -
http://www.investigatingatheism.info/johnadavison.html
jadavison.wordpress.com
"We can conceive of 'a completely atheistic universe, one with no gods or divine involvement of any kind'" begs the question entirely. If God is logically necessary, then any conception of a universe that lacks a god will be self-contradictory at some point -- although the self-contradiction may not be obvious!"
If God is logically necessary, then obviously God exists. The problems with it aren't to do with the logic of that statement, it's (a) it's a false premise you can only get to tautologically and (b) it isn't what was being discussed.
I'll stick to (b). We were discussing God's 'existence', and the (I think surreally weak) argument is 'well, if we can imagine God, then God "exists" in some capacity'.
Here's why it's nonsense:
1. Christians spend a lot of time saying we *can't* get close to imagining God, he's just so infinitely and eternally wonderful.
2. We can imagine all sorts of things, many of them contradictory or which don't 'exist' as any actual human would use the world. We can *discuss* these things, we can't *meet* them. I can imagine, say, 'the perfect night out'. It won't be the same of yours. More to the point, it will never happen.
3. The sort of 'existence' the argument allows is absolutely nothing like the sort of existence worshippers think their God has.
4. It's insulting. A childless couple can imagine having a child, dedicate their life to having a child, vividly picture the life of that child to the tiniest detail. The gap between imagination and having there is all the difference in the universe. When a normal human (someone who's not a theologian or philosopher stubbornly intent on proving there might be something in this god thing) says God might 'exist' they mean like a child, not like the endless, heartbreaking lack of one.
5. It only means God exists 'in the imagination'. Yes. If every Christian in the world signed a statement to that effect, the very next thing that happened is that every atheist would, too. Your God is some whimsical thought you had with no external existence or actual capability. 'God' belongs in the same category as Dumbledore and Bugs Bunny. We agree. Game over, now turn those churches into museums, reshelve your Bibles in the fiction section, end tax breaks and legal immunity for priest-criminals, and let's all get on with our lives.
"The self-imposed historical amnesia of the West today cannot undo the past or the Church's central role in building Western civilization."
1. No atheist says anything other than that Christianity was a major force in the history of the West. It's obviously the case. Atheists can read Paradise Lost or look at Chartres Cathedral and admire the achievement. We happily concede that, say, Isaac Newton was a Christian, motivated by his religion.
2. We descended from monkeys. Have we really 'lost something' because we no longer live in trees picking fleas off each other?
3. Religions evolve. Jesus's disciples, radical Jews railing against Roman occupation, would not recognize the Christians of a few generations later (slaves in Rome), let alone the Pope and Vatican. We take the best bits, dump the rest. Jesus explicitly supported slavery. He was wrong to. We can keep all the 'do unto others' stuff, lose all the 'menstruating women who say the word Jehovah should be stoned in the town square' mumbo-jumbo. Part of that mumbo-jumbo is 'God exists'. We don't need that to be nice to each other.
4. (and this is the crucial one) None of that means God actually exists.
"There are plenty of wars that get dressed up in religious justifications, but scratch the surface and you'll find the real reasons are almost always economic."
The Pope lives in a big palace surrounded by great art, and despite not being the head of an actual, recognized state gets governments to pay for 'state visits'. Being a church means he doesn't pay tax and he's immune from the crimes he's committed. Is the real reason Catholicism exists 'religious' or 'economic'?
Garamond:
The point that Sean, samael, and I are pushing about theists' beliefs is not that consensus determines what concept of God we ought to be talking about, or what God is actually justified by. Rather, it is that many theists (and non-theists!) actually do care and should care whether or not God exists, i.e. they do and should care about the truth of their God-beliefs. Equally, I'd imagine that a large number of scientists do actually care whether atoms exist or not & whether or not their beliefs about them are true, even if their theory is useful. The fact that physicists argue about things like the Copenhagen vs. many-worlds interpretation and whether string theory is true or not, despite there being no empirical evidence to decide the matter at this point, points to it being deeply important to scientists to get the right picture of the world. Otherwise the question of which system to adopt would have been decided long ago based on which one is instrumentally useful.
The point is that an intrinsic part of these sorts of practices is that one cares about the truth of one's beliefs regarding them. You cannot be a serious Christian if you don't care whether or not your belief in God reflects reality. If your belief in God is primarily motivated by the fact that it gets you free food at the Church bake sale and not by evidence for or against the existence of God then you are not a serious Christian.
The justification that people arguing about religion want about religious claims is not whether or not they are useful, but a justification that answers whether or not we ought to adopt some certain religious claim as part of our belief system. These sorts of justifications have to be a part of a certain sort of epistemic reason-giving game, the goal of which is to establish whether or not the claim is true or likely to be true. I don't believe we can evaluate claims based on whether we want them to be true or because having that belief would serve us positively; the positive benefit may make it more likely we see the claim to be true or diminish our standards of evidence, but it isn't the epistemic reason for adopting the belief. Even if we were psychologically capable of doing it, I'd say it's normatively a bad thing to do anyway. You can't and shouldn't be a pragmatist in the explicit sense.
I made the analogy earlier to morality-- if you act in a way that accords to moral rules because it benefits you, rather than because you recognize the truth of moral claims, you aren't really following moral standards and you aren't really a morally good person. Similarly, if someone is convinced to believe in God by a argument for theism that argues that God-belief is practically beneficial, then they aren't really a properly religious person, since they aren't motivated by the proper reasons. At some point it might not be intelligible to say they have a belief, properly speaking, in the existence of God or whatever. I'm sure you've heard people argue that they believe in God because it is comforting to them, gives them hope, and so forth; I and many others find it hard to parse what is going on in their heads. Do they actually believe God exists? How are they interpreting religious claims? What kind of inferences about the state of the world and connections to other concepts could this person be possibly making from a belief, that to them the truth of which does not matter?
... continued
-K.
... from above
Now I have to admit, at bottom, the pragmatist program is appealing to me. It is probably the case that a proper explanation of how we assess truth, or the best explanation of the psychology of belief, or an explanation of why we discuss things and reason at all, will include things like the adaptive forces that have shaped the human brain, sociocultural competition and hierarchy, affective responses, and all sorts of contingencies up to what we ate for breakfast. But the fact that these things are part of the explanation for why religious thought came to be and continues to persist does not make them compelling reasons to adopt the content of religious beliefs. In fact, believing sincerely that these things are the entire story behind a belief in God undermines religious practice, because then there exists no reason to think that "God exists" is true & thus no reason to worship it, to use it as an explanation for events, etc. It's certainly beneficial to believe in berries and sharks, but berries and sharks also exist, and we can justify their existence rather than merely state the adaptive benefits of acting as if they exist. In the sphere of reason-giving, when we are discussing and trying to persuade other people, pragmatism can only play an implicit role.
-K.
"the average theist/apologist/fatheist is embarrassingly short of good arguments in support their own cherished god beliefs."
This is the thing that always shocks me. I'm *not* unread or ignorant, I've sought out all these brilliant arguments for the existence of God, and they remain elusive.
There's a subset of justifications that involve the social value of religion: it's survived all this time, so many people are motivated by it. Yes. True. No argument. But absolutely nothing to do with whether God exists. The Sistine Chapel is beautiful. But just because it's a picture of something doesn't mean that something exists.
John A. Davison says...
I also recommend my own published take on the challenge that Larry has presented -
http://www.investigatingatheism.info/johnadavison.html
That's not very helpful. You seem to be arguing for a planned and purposeful universe on the basis of some unspecified "Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis (PEH)."
Then you say ...
Rather than trying to reason with those who reject a planned and purposeful universe, it might prove to be more effective to shun them, to ignore them, to isolate them, perhaps even to feel sorry for them as the incurable intellectual lepers which I believe they have proven themselves to be.
...
Is there really any conflict between a determined universe as postulated by the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis and Christianity? I answer NO once again. Everything in the Christian ethic pleads for a purposeful universe. Nothing in atheism does - absolutely nothing.
I have no idea what you are trying to say but if that essay is the best you can do then I'm not going to waste any more time trying to find out.
A delusion requires a fixed certainty in a readily falsifiable idea. I have no fixed certainty, no faith, merely a working hypothesis that fits the known facts of how the universe behaves and my own personal experience. It is preferable to me because it fits my own personal experience. Your hypothesis is preferable to you because it fits your personal experience.
I am working from a monist perspective in that the consciousness of the universe is not separate from the structure of the universe, it is an emergent property of the electro-magnetic field that encompasses said universe. This is not a supernatural God, that would be a dualist idea of God separate from nature. This is a completely natural God, God and/or Nature.
Joy is in this instance a matter of simple harmony with God. When I tune my motorcycle engine in harmony with the known laws of physics, it runs better. When I tune my electro-magnetic consciousness field in a way that reasons objectively, it simply functions better. I recognize this better function as joy.
Joy is totally dependent on my biology for function. It is not coming from the deity, it is simply my mind functioning more correctly and a correct function implies a standard by which to compare.
The universal consciousness simply provides the root note in the harmony. I am responsible for creating my own harmonic. The root note in music is separate and dominate, but the third or the fifth can harmonize and still be separate, and distinct.
This joy and harmony are not magical but natural as the universe itself is natural. This is a monist theory, not dualist. It is simply a working theory that explains why when I do something nice that doesn't benefit me personally, I feel joy.
As the Buddha said, "Give without thought of return". There is no self-interest in that and no benefit in terms of survival, yet I feel joy. It is an experience that I must account for in some way. If it was about only my survival, then I would only feel joy in my own benefit, or in the benefit of those necessary to the survival of my group. Yet I feel joy in giving even when there is no benefit to me in any way possible.
You say it is only natural compassion and empathy and I agree, but how do I acquire compassion and empathy? By perceiving the universe outside of my perspective, by seeing the world through eyes other than my own. Those who are only concerned with their own survival have no compassion. In short, by eliminating subjective thinking we enable compassion and empathy. Our consciousness becomes more objective.
So the most sophisticated argument I can present for my God is I see a harmonic pattern that requires a root note.
verbosestoic writes: the one that physics uses to say that you can't trace cause past the Big Bang
Similar thoughts, along the lines of "the Universe must have some cause external to itself" have been written in other comments here.
You ought to read up on physics more. An example of a very nice book that is in line with current physics, helps elucidate some of what Steve LaBonne was talking about, and certainly does *not* hold that cause can't be traced past the Big Bang, or that the Universe must have some cause external to itself, is Dr. Alan Guth's The Inflationary Universe.
By the way, you should really give "Coffee Alert!" warnings when you toss off a bon mot like your remark that you don't think Stephen Hawking really "gets it."
Alex SL says,
I meant to express above that your enjoyably caustic way of dealing with the faithful may not attract enough of the more thoughtful (and thus, unfortunately, often delicate) specimens of that kind and make them comment here, so that you may get a skewed sample of the profoundness of religious justifications.
I'm anticipating that excuse. It's a variant of what we've already heard. We'll undoubtedly be told that the secret, sophisticated, proofs of the existence of God can't be revealed to the New Atheists because they can't handle the truth.
The real reason, of course, is that you can't reveal these secrets to the New Atheists because they might make fun of them and rip them to shreds.
The delicate specimens can't take that risk.
I've already received email messages from some of them telling me that they won't lower themselves to debate on a blog like mine. I can partially understand why some theists would want to avoid this comment thread. They are embarrassed by the theists who are here already and don't want to be associated with them.
Larry Moran
It is plain that you are no more tolerant of my science than Paul Zachary Myers, Clinton Richard Dawkins or Wesley Royce Elsberry. The only difference is that you permit me to speak, something they all denied me long ago.
I will utilize that opportunity for as long as you offer it. Otherwise your Sandwalk is not much different from After The Bar Closes, Panda's Thumb, Pharyngula and richarddawkins.net All of these weblogs tolerate and promote rampant cowardly anonymity which renders 90% of what is said meaningless drivel. Imagine a scientific literature with anonymous authors.
I discourage anonymity on my weblog and call attention to it when it shows up there. Anonymity is mostly therapy for wannabe, mightabeen losers who couldn't make it in the real world. If they had any integrity or any sincere convictions they would be using their real names.
Futheremore, I appreciate your willingness to allow me to criticize the Darwinian fairy tale to which you obviously subscribe, and the fact that you openly ridicule my science and that of my sources pleases me enormously. Frankly, I doubt you are even familiar with it!
Got that? Write that down! Don't stop as it is music to my ancient ears.
jadavison.wordpress.com
Dan
"If you're just going to slag, get lost. If you have a point to make, make it."
The point I am making is that without taking into account modern linguistics and the linguistic turn in philosophy, then all the arguments fall victim to the old koan that "most don't know their arse from a hole in the ground."
Without understanding the limits of language, most proceed here without a clue that they are talking nonsense in the guise of being rational.
Examples: Steve Long: "Yes, I understand God and/or Nature; logically, no difference." utter nonsense. God and Nature can be equated, but nothing, logically, has them linked.
Steve LaBonne: "No AJ, they have only the raw experience, but zero evidence to support their preferred supernatural explanation." complete gobblygook. "raw" and "experience" combined. Since, evidence is experience based the last part is complete contradiction.
The call for evidence for every proposition is problematic. (This is called the verifiable principle and it tossed out here like candy at Halloween with a sense of responsibility.) At first glance it looks good. "God can't be verified. Toss God out. Altruism, again no evidence. Out it goes. Love, well okay I like to keep that but if no evidence for it, out it goes. Randomness? If it can be verified, out it goes, but it the world is not random or directed, then what? The Verifiable principle? What, there is no evidence for the verifiable principle? It fails its own test. And if it goes so does the foundation of science? Okay, we will make an exception for the verifiable principle. We have to take that one on faith. Well, what about the others ones like God, Altruism ... No they they failed the verifiable principle." When some persists with the logic of it, they are told to get lost.
If the problem of language is not addressed (and it isn't) most of the arguments of the Gnu Atheist head toward nonsense in a hurry.
Get you head around this for a few minutes and then start talking, "The basis of Science, the verifiable principle, has as much evidence as God, which is none." It is a statement of faith.
Samael says:
Atoms, as opposed to gods, can actually be observed and detected. We may use shortcuts like the Bohr model to imagine how they work, but the important bits are in the math, and not how we imagine them working.
This would be easier if you had either a background in science or philosophy. As it is, I'm afraid you're going to have to (provisionally) take my word on this and start reading up on the topic. Probably the best place to start is Samir Okasha's Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction (OxfordUP 2002).
No, we can't observe atoms. What we can do is observe instruments and experiments, and from this we can create mathematical models that explain these observations and describe these models using shorthand like "atoms".
There is a large chasm between "atoms as a useful though approximate model" and "atoms exist". This chasm doesn't bother chemists or physicists: scientists deal with models and experiments, not epistemology.
While you (probably) agree that science doesn't need to prove that atoms exist for chemistry to be useful, you're holding religion to a different standard.
Creationist make a similar argument when they ask for proof of evolution, as if evolution was some large physical object susceptible to direct observation. When we point out that evolution is a model and that we have quite a bit of evidence showing that the model is useful, they're happy to conclude that we have no proof of evolution.
If that's a category error --- and I think it is --- then I don't see why it's not a category error to demand proof of other models (including god).
K says several interesting things, including:
The point that Sean, samael, and I are pushing about theists' beliefs is not that consensus determines what concept of God we ought to be talking about, or what God is actually justified by. Rather, it is that many theists (and non-theists!) actually do care and should care whether or not God exists, i.e. they do and should care about the truth of their God-beliefs.
I know a lot of theists and this question doesn't occupy much of their time, nor am I convinced that it should.
Equally, I'd imagine that a large number of scientists do actually care whether atoms exist or not & whether or not their beliefs about them are true, even if their theory is useful.
I work with a lot of physicists and this doesn't appear to occupy much of their time, either.
Otherwise the question of which system to adopt would have been decided long ago based on which one is instrumentally useful.
However, I can say that in both my own work and the work of my colleagues, instrumentality is the gold standard. There's no grant money to be had studying whether or not atoms really exist, nor am I going to get any publications out of that question.
What I can get published are simplified models of real-world systems. The models are wrong --- and I take great care in letting my readers know exactly how my models are wrong. But they're also useful in explaining and predicting the behavior of the system, and I buttress these claims with experimental results. I then show that existing models don't do as well as my proposed model and send the paper off to be savaged by reviewers....
I think this triumph if instrumentality came about precisely because we're not able to apprehend the underlying reality. We have to be content with successively better approximations of it, and we can judge those approximations on their utility without having to raise the question of what's *really* there.
Hopefully I'll have time to respond to more of your points later today.
Garamond Lethe says "No, we can't observe atoms."
IBM would disagree:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV1003.html
wrt IBM, I'm afraid Magritte wins this one:
Garamond Lethe ssya...
This would be easier if you had either a background in science or philosophy.
I have a pretty good background in science and I've read quite a bit about philosophy and epistemology. Does that count?
There is a large chasm between "atoms as a useful though approximate model" and "atoms exist". This chasm doesn't bother chemists or physicists: scientists deal with models and experiments, not epistemology.
While you (probably) agree that science doesn't need to prove that atoms exist for chemistry to be useful, you're holding religion to a different standard.
Do you honestly believe that there's no difference between the evidence for the existence of atoms and (lack of) evidence for the existence of God?
What about the existence of Santa Claus and the tooth fairy? Is your belief in their existence equivalent to your belief in the existence of atoms?
I think it's you who is holding religion to a different standard than just about everything else.
Dan L.,
Note that I'm leaving aside the natural/supernatural arguments since we don't disagree on much. I'll just comment that your definition likely isn't the one that the people you're arguing with accept, and that that thus can impact the entire debate.
If you want to discuss the history of the debate more, we might want to take that to another forum (like my blog) so that we don't clutter this post up with it.
So, onto causation:
"I am little confused why you would think science wouldn't be privileged in having something to say about causality. To me, it seems causality would be inextricably tied to natural law, which is nominally the object of scientific investigation. Do you think we could understand causality purely through introspection without reference to an external world? If so, how would you argue for such a claim?"
I would argue that the definition of the CONCEPT of causation doesn't have to be tied to anything in the world. The definition of causation could, in fact, describe forms of causation that we just don't happen to have in this universe. For example, backwards causation -- where the effect precedes the cause -- does seem to reasonably fit an idea of causation. We don't seem to have any instances of this in the world.
But this is why science DOESN'T get privilege here. If we stuck to what we saw in the world, we'd argue that backwards causation was not causation, only because we haven't seen it. And then what happens if we DO see it?
Giving philosophy -- read "conceptual analysis" -- privilege here allows us to consider what concepts mean without just appealing to what we currently see, avoiding these sorts of issues. But since philosophy is or at least can be empirically informed, we don't lose science completely either.
In this case, where we're trying to decide if all contingent things need a cause, current science doesn't seem to have a good enough handle on it -- by its own admission -- to talk about what cause would REALLY mean in those cases. Again, as I said, I could be wrong, but it is something that needs to be debated.
gillt,
"I think we should use whatever approach is grounded in evidence. "
That's an incredibly vague answer, to the point of being vacuous. Let me refocus then: if we were trying to decide whether a computer program was intelligent, would we use the psychological/AI approach or the Cognitive neuroscience approach? Wouldn't you think, then, that for some entity that is clearly not human we would use the same approach as we would for AI?
"You moved away from arguments for the existence of god to assertions over hypothetical intelligences"
Actually, no, I didn't. I simply took what seemed to a standard way of looking at gods and said that if we could show that the First Cause was a creator and intelligent, then it would be for all intents and purposes a god. I didn't say anything about how to ascertain that. You, on the other had, DID accept that saying "It doesn't have a brain" is NOT sufficient to say that it isn't intelligent, and so I really have no idea what you're trying to get at.
"I find this line of speculating way off-topic. This is a science blog; your arguments cannot be free of or counter to available evidence."
If a science blog is going to talk about philosophy or theology, it has to accept the standards of evidence of philosophy and theology (in some sense) and cannot run and hide behind "Science doesn't consider that evidence!" when it encounters an argument it doesn't like.
Fortunately, your statement here doesn't necessarilyreflect the views of the blog owner or anyone else involved.
sqlrob,
"Yes. This one statement shows you don't understand the philosophical implications and conflate definitions left and right."
Um, you STILL haven't grasped what "nothing" means philosophically, as I'll show in a minute. But even here, YOU tied the answer to one of my questions -- can QM handle creating the universe -- with an answer of "Well, the balance is not 0, so yes". So I asked what would happen when that sum IS 0, and if it would still work. You seem to have replied here with nothing more than "Of course it would!" So my only response can be: then why did you imply that it not being 0 would matter, if it doesn't?
"You owe John $5. You have $5 cash in your pocket.
What is your net worth?
How much money do you have in your pocket?"
Well, I'd certainly have some money, therefore I wouldn't have no money, therefore I would -- applying the analogy back to the original post -- have something other than nothing, and therefore you cannot use this to explain what happens when you really have NOTHING. 'Cause under this sum rule, you have something, not nothing.
Care to try again?
"I'm anticipating that excuse. It's a variant of what we've already heard. We'll undoubtedly be told that the secret, sophisticated, proofs of the existence of God can't be revealed to the New Atheists because they can't handle the truth. "
So, do I get credit for not only not going that route, but for pointing out that, essentially I agree that not only are there no slam dunk arguments for the existence of God, but that none are possible?
And yet, somehow, even with that agreement, I still agree with Shook that the theological ruminations of many atheists are based on a lack of understanding of the arguments they are purportedly addressing. Thus, even though we agree on that, we still disagree. How can that be?
Avoiding -- hopefully -- either of us just dismissing the other as being stupid, the answer HAS to be that we're looking at things differently. Our positions are clashing. Could we, somehow, both [gasp] be correct? Are we just talking past each other?
Wanna give it a shot to see if the problem is that I -- and other "accomodationists" -- are just holding a different view than you? After all, THEY can't be claiming there are wonderful proofs of God's existence 'cause most of them are still atheists. So it would seem to be hard for them to give you examples of something they don't think exists. So, then, what ARE they -- and I -- REALLY concerned about?
Viewing individual atoms through an atomic force microscope doesn't meet Garamonds standards of direct observation?
How about Scanning or Transmission electron microscopy? Does fluorescent microscopy count? Does the lens in our eyes also negate direct observation?
Jud,
"Similar thoughts, along the lines of "the Universe must have some cause external to itself" have been written in other comments here.
You ought to read up on physics more. An example of a very nice book that is in line with current physics, helps elucidate some of what Steve LaBonne was talking about, and certainly does *not* hold that cause can't be traced past the Big Bang, or that the Universe must have some cause external to itself, is Dr. Alan Guth's The Inflationary Universe."
Why would I read up on things that I actually already accept as possible? I never argued that the universe must have some cause external to itself, conceding that the universe itself could be necessary. I'm careful to note, though, that to make any argument along that line you have to argue that the universe is a THING, as opposed to just a name for the set of all things that exist, but as long as we're careful that shouldn't be a problem. I also used the "causation stops at the Big Bang" as an EXAMPLE of a view of causation that might be useful in physics but doesn't seem to match up to the actual concept; I accept that there are other possibilities. So far, about the only credible one I've seen is QM, but the defenders on this blog post are doing a wonderful job of not actually defending it.
So what, exactly, do you think I'd get out of that book you recommended?
"By the way, you should really give "Coffee Alert!" warnings when you toss off a bon mot like your remark that you don't think Stephen Hawking really "gets it." "
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant physicist, and when he says something about physics I'll generally accept it without much skepticism unless it's too outlandish. That doesn't mean that he's an expert in and understands philosophical and theological issues, and his comments on trying to solve the "something from nothing" problem clearly misunderstand what nothing is, philosophically. So, no, he doesn't get what nothing is in the appropriate philosophical sense for the issue in question. But why would you expect him to? Do you expect Dan Dennett to get quantum mechanics right just because he's an excellent philosopher?
This comment from Anonymous, I think, best highlights the problem that the accomodationists are upset about, and one that has plagued me, at least, this entire thread:
"did you remember to eliminate special pleading?
no?
oops."
See, I actually WAS very careful to do just that. Anonymous read the first sentence, decided that he or she knew what my entire argument was, and then proceeded to attack it without bothering to actually read that, well, I WASN'T ARGUING THAT. I can't think of one response to my "best starting point" comment that didn't ignore about half of it.
I'm not saying the argument is right. It's certainly not even close to proven, as I already conceded. But you'd think people would read it before criticizing it, no?
After all, I now list QM in almost every comment I make on it as being perhaps a counter to one of my key premises, to remind everyone that I'm not dodging that point. That's probably more honest than I have to be in such a discussion. Is READING the comment too much for people to handle, in light of that?
verbosestoic:
"That's an incredibly vague answer, to the point of being vacuous."
My answer was obvious: we don't speculate on things whose existence we are far from proving. You keep wanting to hurry up and assume characteristics about god without doing the necessary work of first providing a good argument for its existence.
"Wouldn't you think, then, that for some entity that is clearly not human we would use the same approach as we would for AI?"
Why should I be committed to accepting any characteristic of god until you've done the above? Why is god like AI? Is that the only alternative to a non-human brain? Maybe the god-brain is so other than anything in our materialistic worldview that analogies and comparisons are laughably off-base.
"I simply took what seemed to a standard way of looking at gods and said that if we could show that the First Cause was a creator and intelligent, then it would be for all intents and purposes a god."
The "standard" way of looking at god is to assert that it's a First Cause and intelligent. That's not a conclusion you logically arrived at.
"You, on the other had, DID accept that saying "It doesn't have a brain" is NOT sufficient to say that it isn't intelligent."
Hypothetically, I see no reason why AI is impossible, only exceedingly unlikely as an intelligence we would call human-like. That has nothing to do with god.
"If a science blog is going to talk about philosophy or theology, it has to accept the standards of evidence of philosophy and theology (in some sense)"
Really? And would you care to enlighten us on those different yet equally valid ways of knowing?
Scientists have a commitment to evidence, as you know. So it seems like you're admitting your ideas about god are not grounded in evidence. For why else whine about it?
gillt,
"My answer was obvious: we don't speculate on things whose existence we are far from proving. You keep wanting to hurry up and assume characteristics about god without doing the necessary work of first providing a good argument for its existence. "
Before anyone can provide an argument for the existence of a god, we do have to have some idea of what a god would be. Now, this step often gets skipped because thousands of years of theology has given us at least a loose idea of that. That idea includes that all of the gods we're talking about are intelligent and that most of them created the universe. Thus, I am presuming nothing but the definition of the word. What alternate definition would you propose? Do you really think that a god doesn't have to be intelligent to be a god?
(Now, some of the more vague theologies might well posit that, but they're not the sort of god that I, at least, am talking about, so you can't use their arguments against me, nor mine against them.)
"Why should I be committed to accepting any characteristic of god until you've done the above? Why is god like AI? Is that the only alternative to a non-human brain? Maybe the god-brain is so other than anything in our materialistic worldview that analogies and comparisons are laughably off-base. "
You're dodging here. Cognitive neuroscience still couldn't be used because that studies -- as you said -- a human-line brain. So, we're gonna have to start -- if we wanted to talk about any intelligent, non-human entity -- using the psychological/AI approach. Now, can that approach work for a god? I see no reason why it can't, since it's explicitly designed to not care about implementation. It's how it acts that matters for that. Why do you think that a god wouldn't be judgeable by that standard?
The odd thing here is that normally THEISTS get accused of relying on obfuscating definitons, but here I'm basically making concrete statements of things that have to be and you're denying that proposed definition for some unfathomable reason.
"The "standard" way of looking at god is to assert that it's a First Cause and intelligent. That's not a conclusion you logically arrived at. "
Sorry, but I'm having trouble parsing this. Gods are generally defined as creating the universe and being intelligent. Thus, if we have a necessary thing that created the universe and was intelligent, it would fit the definition of god and be one. Which one is unclear, but being one is certain. So what's the point here? What are you disagreeing with?
"Really? And would you care to enlighten us on those different yet equally valid ways of knowing?
Scientists have a commitment to evidence, as you know. So it seems like you're admitting your ideas about god are not grounded in evidence. For why else whine about it?"
I have no idea what you mean when you say "I need evidence". Philosophy, for example, counts a priori arguments as evidence. What I'm doing counts as a perfectly valid philosophical argument. Demanding that I need to provide more evidence because this is a science blog makes no sense when the science blog is addressing philosophical concerns. Thus, you are invalidly holding philosophical claims to scientific standards of evidence. That's not a problem with my argument, but with you mixing up your fields.
All these words, and not a sentence that's remotely responsive to Larry's challenge; just the same old bullshit we always get. Pretty pathetic.
Yes, the non-overlapping magisteria between science and philosophy is why Stephen Hawking can be dismissed.
Brilliant!
gillt,
"Yes, the non-overlapping magisteria between science and philosophy is why Stephen Hawking can be dismissed.
Brilliant!"
No one said that. All I said is that he doesn't understand what the philosophical concern of "something from nothing" is, because he doesn't understand what "nothing" means there. Thus, his arguments don't address the concern. Surely we don't need any sort of NOMA position to understand that to work arguments have to address the problems they're supposed refuting?
Contra (extremely)verbosestoic, philosophy has never had anything useful to say about what "nothing" is. Precise analysis of just what "nothing" can and can't mean was not possible before the discovery of the uncertainty principle. This is a perfect example of a question that philosophy has pretended to address but that only science actually can.
Not for the fist time, I point out that the delusion that substantive conclusions can be obtained from purely logical arguments is an occupational disease of bad philosophers. It's the very delusion that hobbled ancient Greek science, but by now we should long since know better.
"Contra (extremely)verbosestoic, philosophy has never had anything useful to say about what "nothing" is. Precise analysis of just what "nothing" can and can't mean was not possible before the discovery of the uncertainty principle. This is a perfect example of a question that philosophy has pretended to address but that only science actually can."
So, go for it. Tell me -- with appropriate links and evidence -- what "nothing" really is. And see if you can do better than, well, the every day standard one of NOTHING.
Let me toss out this challenge to you. In Hawking, he makes, I believe, an argument about how we can use gravity or the laws thereof to get something out of nothing. So I ask this: is he talking strictly about the laws of gravity? Well, the laws of gravity quite clearly just descriptions of how masses interact, and so require masses -- ie things -- to work. So there's something in that case. But if he means gravity as a force ITSELF, then why wouldn't that force count as something?
If you're going to claim that only science can settle this question, show your work.
And philosophy doesn't ignore empirical or scientific claims, so it'll examine them.
"Not for the fist time, I point out that the delusion that substantive conclusions can be obtained from purely logical arguments is an occupational disease of bad philosophers. It's the very delusion that hobbled ancient Greek science, but by now we should long since know better."
Define "substantive". Certainly, EMPIRICAL claims can't be done that way, but philosophy doesn't try. But how would you empirically prove what nothing is? What if you have no cases of nothing in the universe? How could science ever show what nothing is if it has no examples to generalize from?
IME, the most popular argument for the existence of god(s) is some version of this:
http://oi52.tinypic.com/2n7qcmw.jpg
Weasel out of the burden of evidence. Regardless of what medieval sophistry precedes this argument, apoligists always seem to end up there.
Again, verbosestoic reveals that he thinks definitions are something real and not just linguistic conveniences. In the metaphysical essentialistic sense that you're trying to use, there isn't something inherent that X "is"- for ANY value of X. Thinking otherwise is the kind of error that made philosophy go round in circles for millennia.
If you can ever free yourself of the mental disease of essentialism, go educate yourself about quantum fluctuations and you might begin to grasp my point. Until then you're unqualified to participate in the discussion you're ineptly trying to have.
Steve Labonne,
"Again, verbosestoic reveals that he thinks definitions are something real and not just linguistic conveniences. In the metaphysical essentialistic sense that you're trying to use, there isn't something inherent that X "is"- for ANY value of X. Thinking otherwise is the kind of error that made philosophy go round in circles for millennia."
Linguistic definitions track useage. Philosophical definitions track concepts. I'm looking for the latter.
As for your final paragraph, I note that you weaselled out of even showing how you would use science to determine what counts as nothing. Isn't that where we should start?
I just explained to you that there is no possibility of there being just one thing that gets to "count as nothing", and that this kind of word-chopping cannot lead anywhere. But of course, it's all you've got. FAIL.
And still no ghost of a response to Larry's challenge.
"not only are there no slam dunk arguments for the existence of God, but that none are possible?"
You don't mean 'possible', you mean 'evident'.
It is very, very 'possible' to picture a world where the existence of God is indisputable. The Bible portrays a world with evidence - angels, the voice of God booming, seas parting, the Sun stopping ... er ... moving around the Earth.
A number of the alleged 'proofs of god' are based on the premise we do live in such a world - the Iron Age version was 'what else could make thunder', the modern version of exactly the same argument is 'what else could set the universe constants'.
There is no place for logic in biological science. There is nothing logical about life and its origin or, more likely, origins.
It is the apparent "reasonableness" of Darwin's Victorian fantasy that ensured its certain downfall. Darwinism is the most sustained instance of mass hysteria in the history of human communication.
The animate world defies any form of logic as any child can understand.
"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five."
Groucho Marx
"An hypothesis does not cease to be an hypothesis when a lot of people believe it."
Boris Ephrussi
Evolution through natural selection is the most absurd proposal ever to escape the human imagination to find the printed page. There is not a word in Darwin's opus minimus that has now or ever had anything whatsoever to do with its grandiose title - not a word! It is nothing short of miraculous that there are still those who give it any credence at all.
jadavison.wordpress.com
"That doesn't mean that he's an expert in and understands philosophical and theological issues"
For twenty years Christians have been banging on about how Hawking talking about 'know the mind of God' proves he's a theist and what a genius he is and take note atheists, because he's the ultimate scientific authority on this sort of thing.
So it's hilarious to see them now going on about how he's a crippled idiot with a fake American accent who doesn't know sh!t.
"You don't mean 'possible', you mean 'evident'.
It is very, very 'possible' to picture a world where the existence of God is indisputable. The Bible portrays a world with evidence - angels, the voice of God booming, seas parting, the Sun stopping ... er ... moving around the Earth.
A number of the alleged 'proofs of god' are based on the premise we do live in such a world - the Iron Age version was 'what else could make thunder', the modern version of exactly the same argument is 'what else could set the universe constants'."
No, I do actually mean possible. Take the standard definition -- that I haven't relied on so far -- of the Judeo-Christian God who is omnipotent and omniscient. How would that booming voice, those angels, or anything else empirical prove that you had an God that knew everything and could do everything, as opposed to knowing a lot and being really powerful? You can't. But it's really hard to find a non-empirical argument to get that that doesn't end up being the sort of argument that Steve Labonne hates. So how do you get it?
There might be a way, but right now I'm pretty skeptical. The empirical stuff would get "Really powerful entity that screws around with our lives", which might get us a more generic god (or might not; see really powerful aliens) but would it get us the gods that people are generally worried about? Probably not.
Thus, no, probably not possible.
Anonymous,
"For twenty years Christians have been banging on about how Hawking talking about 'know the mind of God' proves he's a theist and what a genius he is and take note atheists, because he's the ultimate scientific authority on this sort of thing.
So it's hilarious to see them now going on about how he's a crippled idiot with a fake American accent who doesn't know sh!t."
I have done neither. My view has been consistent in that his physics expertise in no way makes him an expert in philosophy/theology, whether he's arguing something that could be on the side of theism or on the side of atheism. And I don't even argue that he doesn't know anything, but was just replying to someone who presumably found it shocking that I might be able to say that Hawking is missing a key point of the philosophical argument he is purporting to address.
verbosestoic presumes to lambaste his betters for their supposed lack of philosophical acumen, yet is himself so inept that he still can't grasp the simple concept that nothing real can depend on a mere verbal definition. It's too comical. It's like someone repeatedly shooting himself in the foot while ranting about others' poor marksmanship.
"Hawking is missing a key point of the philosophical argument he is purporting to address"
It's charming you think it's a philosophical claim, or that 'God was involved in the creation of the universe' isn't a scientific claim.
To paraphrase the blessed Virgin Mandy 'Not a scientific claim? How much more of a scientific claim can you make?!'.
Do you believe that God had anything, at all, to do with the creation of the universe?
If so, you're making a very straightforward scientific claim. It might be a hard question to answer (it isn't, as it happens), but it's an entirely scientific question, one that can be fully answered by scientific inquiry.
Unless you bend very easy words like 'involved' or 'created' or 'universe' so much out of shape that they don't actually mean what they usually do.
Let me preempt your reply 'you're being naive and ignoring thousands of years of .... blah blah'. No, I'm not. If someone asked 'what's the capital of France?', the answer isn't 'well, let us redefine France to mean England and so the answer's "London".' and you'd laugh at anyone who did and think they were, you know, a little soft in the head.
But it's impolite to say that about religious people.
verbosestoic: "[...] thousands of years of theology has given us at least a loose idea of that. That idea includes that all of the gods we're talking about are intelligent and that most of them created the universe."
Theology didn't give that concept of god, bronze-age goat-herds, nomads and witch-doctors did. And so the justification for positing an intelligent creator is suspect.
Here's another way to look at it: God is an intelligent creator--a judgment you insist on making. His intelligence cannot be denied if his existence is posited, because you made the two conceptions (existent and intelligent) identical in your god concept. But when I say "God does not exist," neither intelligence nor any other predicate is affirmed; they must all disappear with the subject. And there's really nothing you can do about. In short, you're simply cogitating his existence in the conception. And that won't do.
Besides, your incomplete definition* of god is indistinguishable from a sufficiently advanced alien race and would be much more likely the case if we were to find evidence of such a thing.
*By intelligent do you mean also moral, because most theologies insists god is omni-benevolent in addition to the other omnis.
"But it's really hard to find a non-empirical argument"
Yeah, but I'm (just) talking about empirical evidence. And the Christian God could prove his own existence.
And the thing is, you're framing this debate, like so many theists do, as if there's *all this evidence* over here for God and *all this evidence over here* for no God and however would we ever decide between this two options.
There's no evidence for God, to the point where atheists are accused of being naive for even suggesting we might find any. Meanwhile - Hawking's point - there are all sorts of robust models for godless ways that things that the religious used to claim gods did - the weather, where man came from, the creation of the universe.
It's the old analogy - you don't need to see someone murdering someone. If you've got pictures of him as the only other person at the scene, find the bloody knife in his house, learn that he hated the victim and told everyone he was going off to murder him and the man willingly signed a confession the moment you caught him ... well, he almost certainly murdered the guy. You don't need to know the exact Hebrew word that appeared in the Commandment against murder.
"It's charming you think it's a philosophical claim, or that 'God was involved in the creation of the universe' isn't a scientific claim. "
The point under contention is the argument that something cannot come from nothing, a long-standing philosophical argument. Hawking thinks that he's found a way around that, a proof of a way that that can happen. But, to do so, he needs to make certain that what he's calling "nothing" is what that argument is calling "nothing", or else he's missing the argument and at best unintentionally equivocating.
On a shallow reading of his argument, that seems to be exactly what he's doing. Why, then, do you think that ensuring that he's talking about the same philosophical concept as everyone else is a SCIENTIFIC matter?
"he needs to make certain that what he's calling "nothing" is what that argument is calling "nothing""
Sorry, yes ... if you say that 'France' is actually 'England', then the capital of France is London.
If only I'd had some way of knowing you were going to say that.
Let's make this easy. Define 'evidence' any way you want to. Any way at all. Give one piece of evidence that the Christian God exists. I'm not asking for proof, just for one piece of evidence. Pick the piece of evidence that you think is the *most* compelling.
The point under contention is the argument that something cannot come from nothing, a long-standing philosophical argument.
A long-standing philosophical word salad, rather; devoid of signification.
Yet again, questions like "what constitutes empty space" are questions for physics- questions not understood before the discovery of quantum mechanics and general relativity- not questions for philosphy.
It's you who are unqualified to dispute with Hawking because of your ignorance of physics, not he who is unqualified to dispute with you because of his supposed ignorance of philosophy (a field in with you seem to be stuck in the 12th Century yourself.)
Really, you're not fooling anybody. The next time you make any sort of point will be the first.
gillt,
"Theology didn't give that concept of god, bronze-age goat-herds, nomads and witch-doctors did. And so the justification for positing an intelligent creator is suspect."
Sigh. So what? We aren't talking about that, but what definition we should be using to talk about gods to try to determine if they exist. Why do you want to deny clear definitions when I want to at least make one clear so that we can discuss it? The mind boggles.
"Here's another way to look at it: God is an intelligent creator--a judgment you insist on making."
That's not a "judgement". That's basically me pointing out the details of the concept so that we can discuss it. Seems to be something that pretty much all gods hold and something that certainly applies to the concept I'm using. I'm not in any way saying that such an entity exists ...
"His intelligence cannot be denied if his existence is posited, because you made the two conceptions (existent and intelligent) identical in your god concept. But when I say "God does not exist," neither intelligence nor any other predicate is affirmed; they must all disappear with the subject. And there's really nothing you can do about. In short, you're simply cogitating his existence in the conception. And that won't do. "
Um, why in the world do you think I'd disagree with this? My claim is actually this: the thing we're looking for -- God -- if it exists, is intelligent, because that's part of the definition of that god thing. This is the precise equivalent to saying that if there is water on Mars, it will have hydrogen. This in no way stipulates that God or god must exist. If god doesn't exist, then we get into semantic wrangling over whether or not god is intelligent (of the form "Is Santa Claus jolly?"). I understand and accept all of this. I always have. So, bluntly, what the heck is your point? I am not in any way defining God into existence; quite the contrary, in fact, since my argument relied on showing empirically that the universe needed an intelligent creator, which I then just aligned with the concept of god (lower case) to at least be able to say that atheism is wrong (even if it doesn't say what god that is).
"Besides, your incomplete definition* of god is indistinguishable from a sufficiently advanced alien race and would be much more likely the case if we were to find evidence of such a thing. "
Unless we have multiverses, a sufficiently advanced alien race wouldn't be a creator of the universe (although they might be of us) and so wouldn't count. And if they were external to our universe, the difference between them and gods would be quite narrow. You seem to have completely lost track of what we're talking about here ...
"*By intelligent do you mean also moral, because most theologies insists god is omni-benevolent in addition to the other omnis."
This argument does not and is not intended to address that. It could support Odin or Zeus as well, who are clearly not omnibenevolent. But that comes in at the point of "Okay, got something that looks like a god. Which one is it?" Since we aren't even at the point of "looks like a god yet", I'm comfortable putting that aside until we get that.
Anonymous,
" "But it's really hard to find a non-empirical argument"
Yeah, but I'm (just) talking about empirical evidence. And the Christian God could prove his own existence."
I addressed in that comment why the empirical evidence doesn't work either. So you presenting this as if I'm only talking about non-empirical arguments is disingenuous.
"And the thing is, you're framing this debate, like so many theists do, as if there's *all this evidence* over here for God and *all this evidence over here* for no God and however would we ever decide between this two options."
Support this contention. I deny that I am framing it at all in that way. I was, in fact, only looking at the evidence you brought up as POTENTIAL evidence when talking about the evidence, and showed that even THAT level is lacking. So, no, not doing that ... unless you can show me how I am, of course.
"Meanwhile - Hawking's point - there are all sorts of robust models for godless ways that things that the religious used to claim gods did - the weather, where man came from, the creation of the universe. "
And my contention is that his model for the creation of the universe doesn't settle the question that he's supposedly addressing. That makes it a poor model. I don't use that to say that God exists or is even the best explanation. I just point out that claims that he's settled the issue are quite premature.
"Sorry, yes ... if you say that 'France' is actually 'England', then the capital of France is London. "
Unfortunately, this is a better example of what Hawking is doing than what I'm doing.
Let me state the issue in a less confrontational form:
Hawking enters into a conversation, and at some point someone says "The capital of Canada -- York ... " and Hawking interrupts by saying "The capital of Canada is Ottawa, not York." And the person replies, "Well, yes, today it's Ottawa ... but in the War of 1812, when it was sacked by the Americans, it was York". Isn't it obvious from this that while Hawking would be right about the capital of Canada, he would be applying the wrong meaning to the issue under discussion?
That's what I'm claiming is happening here. Hawking is trying to address the concerns raised by philosophical conceptual analysis of "nothing" by using his physics notion, but to me it seems that he is missing the underlying concern because nothing doesn't mean there what Hawking means. This doesn't mean he's wrong. This doesn't even mean that the concerns in the original argument are reasonable, valid, or correct. It just means that claiming to have settled that argument by using a different definition of "nothing" is equivocation and thus a logical fallacy.
"Let's make this easy. Define 'evidence' any way you want to. Any way at all. Give one piece of evidence that the Christian God exists. I'm not asking for proof, just for one piece of evidence. Pick the piece of evidence that you think is the *most* compelling."
Uh-uh. I know how this goes. First, I don't find the evidence compelling, but it would take masses of epistemology that you don't have the patience for to get you to understand why that doesn't impact, to me, belief. Second, I could list the standard things that we do consider at least weak evidence for things -- ancient stories like the Bible, personal experiences -- and you'd just retreat to "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and ignore it.
Tell ya what: you tell me what evidence you want, and I'll tell you if there is any and if those standards are higher than what we'd normally set for belief.
Here are the problems with your position as I see it:
Assumption 1: God is in part defined as an intelligent creator of the universe.
Assumption 2: We would know what a god-like intelligence is if we saw it.
You've provided only a bad justification for the first assumption and on top of that made a false necessity out of his existence.
I've already discussed why the second assumption is not obviously true and, no, Formalism doesn't save it.
I suppose I could play along without conceding any of your assumptions and ask you to go ahead and provide evidence for the existence of an intelligent creator that lies outside the universe.
Larry
Scientists don't debate either. They discover and then publish their discoveries. I have an essay in my book - "The Absurdity of Debate."
Just what have you published that clarified the mechanism of organic evolution? Pee Zee Myers never published a word on that subject. Neither did Dawkins or Elsberry. Dawkins just "thinks" he did. He lives in a fantasy world entirely of his own invention, one book after another, each more bizarre than the last until now he has abandoned science completely to dedicate himself to the idiotic goal of converting the entire world to International Atheism. Myers has reached the same pathetic state and so has Elsberry. As far as I can understand this thread, so have you. Why else would you introduce such a silly challenge, a proposition that can never be resolved?
There is not a scintilla of evidence for a personal God and if you had any familiarity with my science you would realize that I am not the Bible Banging Creationist that you have knee-jerk depicted me to be. You Darwinians are the most intolerant herd of ideologists ever assembled in the history of Western Civilization.
Now aren't you getting a little tired of absorbing my contempt for you cowardly Darwinian mystics? You can always do what your fellow bloggers did long ago and banish me from your cozy little "groupthink."
Alternatively, if you have masochistic tendencies, I'm here to gratify them. Trust me!
I thrive on adversity, especially when it comes from those who believe that it is intrinsic in the nature of matter to self-assemble into living evolving creatures, a notion I instinctively rejected seventy years ago when I was twelve.
It doesn't get any better than this!
jadavison.wordpress.com
verbosestoic: "Tell ya what: you tell me what evidence you want, and I'll tell you if there is any and if those standards are higher than what we'd normally set for belief."
Not belief, but way of knowing, otherwise you'd have ended this argument long ago with the declaration, "Have Faith!"
Though some people insist that faith is actually a way of knowing, along with revelation, they would be wrong in a practical sense.
"his model for the creation of the universe doesn't settle the question that he's supposedly addressing"
The question is 'how did the universe start?', plain and simple. It's not 'how do we reconcile what physics tells us with a given set of religious beliefs'.
"Support this contention."
Easy. Do like I asked and give me one piece of evidence.
Christianity, to pick one, makes lots of claims for its god. Not *just* in the Bible, but there are claims made in the Bible.
It's claimed that God stopped the Sun moving around the Earth. We know that the Earth goes around the Sun, so we know God did no such thing.
Cheap example, but a piece of evidence that a claim made by Christians can't possibly be true.
"Tell ya what: you tell me what evidence you want, and I'll tell you if there is any"
An example that at least one particle, once, somewhere in the universe, was moved in a way that we wouldn't expect by something that's best explained by divine intervention.
I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible. A dollar store magnet can lift a small piece of metal. Is there any evidence God has that ability?
To preempt, this isn't 'naive'. Millions worship a God they think answers, or at least might answer, a prayer by tipping the scales their way. No one thinks it's as simple as 'pray for something, get it' (there is, of course, no reason at all why such a universe *can't* exist), even though that's exactly what Jesus promises.
If it doesn't work that way ... explain how it does work, don't just tell me I'm being silly.
If God lacks the ability to lift small pieces of metal, then give me an example of an ability he does demonstrate.
maybe, and this is just a thought- but maybe one can't prove the existence of god here or anywhere now because we still have the wrong idea and/or approach regarding what we're looking for? my current personal conclusion, which will surely change over time through continued thought and research is that i will no longer apply critical thinking or faith (especially faith in the sense that i can 'feel it in my heart', or take someone else's word for it without mixing thinking in there somehow) to the question presented expecting an answer to ever come out of it. this is not saying that the question isn't worth pursuing through thought or faith, as we have to cope somehow, but they won't answer the question. anyone who goes any further than a simple 'i don't know' has something to prove, and on a level lower than the worth of the true idea of 'god', whether 'he' is sentient or not. proof is overrated. i refuse to put a name to my stance on the 'god' issue, and i'll probably get crapped on from all sides for mentioning nietzsche's approach to both the terrible consequences of morals and the unending quest of science to value what it doesn't know over what it does, but why not.
without taking sides (not out of indecisiveness but because i think logic will fail, and faith is a willful clinging to habit and fear of change more than it is a 'spiritual' matter; neither are deserving of taking on this issue, even together- and yes, i do think it's healthy not to feel i have to believe these and other concepts can complete the task) i'll say my thoughts go as far as this: if a sentient 'god' doesn't exist, why would that necessarily be a bad thing? more than anything it shows our own fears of a lack of value to our existence to argue that all this had to be willfully created and governed with a purpose, especially in the context of creation and government based on how we humans perceive it to happen- and if 'god' does exist 'he' is right here around us, within us, whichever (but probably both) and we can't see 'him' yet for our own various reasons, probably because of our attachment to complexity and semantics, and fears that the answer may not be on our comfort level. this includes me.
i'm tempted to suggest that as long as we're trapped within these ideas that thought and faith can provide the answer instead of considering that they might really only be getting in the way, we'll never know. maybe the answer is simple rather than complex, too simple for either thought or faith to successfully drop down to? thought and faith apply to healthy physical and psychological survival. this does not necessarily mean that they can extend any further. the idea of unproven forces outside our control are important whether one likes to admit it or not because it comes into play when we reach the limits of our ability to either understand something or deal with the reality of it. it's how we cope.
there is a underlying force at play here, even between us debating and agreeing humans- we all have an interest in this question, even if we claim not to have any beliefs- after all, you have to consider the question before you can come to a conclusion, and you wouldn't come to a conclusion if you weren't interested. there is an idea greater than we are able to comprehend behind all the names and labels of 'god', though this is not implying that anything is actually there beyond an idea. i still wonder if an answer can be too simple to grasp..
maybe, and this is just a thought- but maybe one can't prove the existence of god here or anywhere now because we still have the wrong idea and/or approach regarding what we're looking for? my current personal conclusion is that i will no longer apply critical thinking or faith (especially faith in the sense that i can 'feel it in my heart', or take someone else's word for it without mixing thinking in there somehow) to the question presented expecting an answer to ever come out of it. not saying that the question isn't worth pursuing through thought or faith, as we have to cope somehow, but they won't answer the question. anyone who goes any further than a simple 'i don't know' has something to prove, and on a level lower than the worth of the true idea of 'god', whether 'he' is sentient or not. proof is overrated. i'll probably get crapped on from all sides for mentioning nietzsche's approach to both the terrible consequences of morals and the unending quest of science to value what it doesn't know over what it does, but why not.
without taking sides (not out of indecisiveness but because i think logic will fail, and faith is a willful clinging to habit and fear of change more than it is a 'spiritual' matter; neither are deserving of taking on this issue, even together) i'll say my thoughts go as far as this: if a sentient 'god' doesn't exist, why would that necessarily be a bad thing? more than anything it shows our own fears of a lack of value to our existence to argue that all this had to be willfully created and governed with a purpose, especially in the context of creation and government based on how we humans perceive it to happen- and if 'god' does exist 'he' is right here around us, within us, whichever (but probably both) and we can't see 'him' yet for our own various reasons, probably because of our attachment to complexity and semantics, and fears that the answer may not be on our comfort level. this includes me.
i'm tempted to suggest that as long as we're trapped within these ideas that thought and faith can provide the answer instead of considering that they might really only be getting in the way, we'll never know. maybe the answer is simple rather than complex, too simple for either thought or faith to successfully drop down to? thought and faith apply to healthy physical and psychological survival. this does not necessarily mean that they can extend any further. the idea of unproven forces outside our control are important whether one likes to admit it or not because it comes into play when we reach the limits of our ability to either understand something or deal with the reality of it. it's how we cope.
i still wonder if an answer can be too simple to grasp..
this is just a thought: maybe one can't prove the existence of god because we still have an skewed approach regarding what we're looking for? i no longer apply critical thinking or faith (especially in the sense that i can 'feel it in my heart') to the question presented expecting an answer to ever come out of it. this is not saying that the question isn't worth pursuing through either, as we have to cope somehow, but they won't answer the question. anyone who goes any further than a simple 'i don't know' has something to prove, and on a level lower than the worth of the true idea. proof is overrated. i'll probably get crapped on from all sides for mentioning nietzsche's approach to both the terrible consequences of morals and the unending quest of science to value what it doesn't know over what it does, but why not.
without taking sides (not out of indecisiveness but because i think logic will fail, and faith is a willful clinging to habit and fear of change more than it is a 'spiritual' matter; neither are deserving of taking on this issue, even together) i'll say my thoughts go as far as this: if a sentient 'god' doesn't exist, why would that necessarily be a bad thing? it only shows our own fears of a lack of value to our existence- and if 'god' does exist 'he' is right here around us, within us, whichever (but probably both) and we can't see 'him' yet for our own various reasons, probably because of our attachment to complexity and semantics, and fears that the answer may not be on our comfort level. this includes me.
i'm tempted to suggest that as long as we're trapped within these ideas that thought and faith can provide the answer instead of considering that they might really only be getting in the way, we'll never know. thought and faith apply to healthy physical and psychological survival. this does not necessarily mean that they can extend any further. the idea of unproven forces outside our control are important whether one likes to admit it or not because it comes into play when we reach the limits of our ability to either understand something or deal with the reality of it. it's how we cope.
maybe the answer is simple rather than complex, too simple for either?
Fine Tuning
Our models of reality are finely tuned by us in such a way as to generate the most accurate predictions we can manage.
This does not imply that reality itself is finely tuned. Reality is as reality does.
The first problem with fine-tuning arguments is that they mistake our modelling of reality for reality itself.
To me, it is the most powerful objection to arguments from the alleged fine-tuning of reality. Wanted to share it, because I don't think I've seen it yet in this thread.
Kalaam Cosmological Argument
The Kalaam Cosmological Argument assumes that our intuitions about causality apply to the whole universe.
All our intuitions about causality are built up from our experiences.
All our experiences come from within one universe.
So we cannot infer anything about how or if causality applies to a universe if the only thing we have to go on is our own intuitions about causality.
Again: I find this the strongest objection to the Kalaam argument, and didn't spot it anywhere in this thread.
> i refuse to put a name to my stance on the 'god' issue<
Do you alter your behavior in any way because there is or might be a god? Any way at all, I'll let you define terms.
If so, 'theist'. If not, 'atheist'.
> Prof. Moran: Am I allowed to say "mission accomplished"?
Well, not until you tell me how "Babylon will never be rebuilt" is as far as an argument...
@anonymous: oops, didn't answer the first part of your post. no, actually, i don't worry about altering behavior for any reason other than achieving a long term goal, like keeping my job for financial security or getting a college degree, but even those won't keep me confined to the point that i won't take action if something clearly needs to be taken care of. left to my own devices i get called an a-hole very, very often, and a lot of people don't hang around me for long. i think people just confuse a-hole with honesty, there are a lot of similarities regarding hearing things that may upset you. i cared about behavior and morals, and bad, for a while, until i realized that something like being polite so i don't hurt someone's feelings is usually the most rude and unhealthy thing i can do (always exceptions, but not that many). but no, i don't do it for 'god' or anyone else, it's my own method of personal growth. if i can't tell others the truth, how do i know i can tell it to myself?
oh and whoever the admin is, sorry about the multi-post. site said the comment was too long to post, i rewrote it a couple of times to shrink it, they posted though. all but the last comment are deletable..
annnnd now to register =)
Part of Garamond Lethe's argument here reminds me of an exchange that, if I am not mistaken, was attributed to Isaac Asimov and an unnamed student he met. To apply the gist of it to our present topic:
There are those who think that there is an almighty creator god, and they are wrong. There are those who think that atoms are small solid balls, and they are also wrong. But if you think that both groups are wrong to the same degree, you are wronger than both of them put together.
We approximate truth with our explanations. The atoms as tiny balls story is what Terry Pratchett likes to call a lie for children - an approximation of the truth about as close as the recipient of the story can understand at their current level of education.
But we can actually see atoms now, with our best electron microscopes (they look kinda like fuzzy balls), and even before that, we could infer them. In the case of god, to the best of our knowledge there is no there there to be approximated in any way. It is just a phantasm, an invention with no indication that it was ever founded on something more tangible than wishful thinking and the mistaken attribution of design and intent to purely unconscious processes.
---
I guess the most hopeful apologetics (if actual empirical evidence is not forthcoming, and most of us know it isn't, the silly show of selection bias being applied to prophecies notwithstanding) would be the attempt to show god as a logical necessity, mentioned waaaaay above by somebody. I have a hard time, however, believing that anything that could be shown to be logically necessary in the end, even if something comes out of that at all, could actually deserve to be called god, as that word is fraught with implications of consciousness, personhood and creativity. Postulating a first cause or intrinsic necessity is all well and nice, but the jump over to "and this we call god" has never been convincing.
lee_merrill:
Well, not until you tell me how "Babylon will never be rebuilt" is as far as an argument...
It's a logical fallacy, not an argument. It's just a coincidence that you think means something.
Consider that millions of people will think of someone they know during any given day, then for a small percentage, they'll see, receive a call, or some notification of that person they thought of. They'll think 'wow, spooky, I was just thinking of that person'. If only 1 in a million people thinking of a person, have concurrent notification of that person in a day, that's still something that occurs thousands of times in a day, given the population. It's not magic, just coincidence. Just like there'd be thousands of supposed prophesies, of which a small number (like your favourite) appear to coincide with reality.
You're counting the hits, and ignoring the misses. It's bad logic. Your claim to be using Occam's razor while simultaneously ignoring the explanation that Occam's razor would provide (coincidence, not God), was cute.
Larry says:
I have a pretty good background in science and I've read quite a bit about philosophy and epistemology. Does that count?
Glad to hear it. I had listed several approaches to scientific epistemology earlier (operationalism, instrumentalism, etc.). Where do you put yourself on that continuum?
Do you honestly believe that there's no difference between the evidence for the existence of atoms and (lack of) evidence for the existence of God?
Evidence is evidence, and there's plenty to support various models of gods. (One obvious example: we have overwhelming support for the class of gods with an inordinate fondness for beetles.)
Now, you may be able to propose different models that better account for the evidence, and that allows us to compare apples to apples.
One of the several benefits to this approach is that it avoids the epistemic question of whether god / atoms / evolution *really* exists. The correct, scientific answer there is "we can't know with absolute certainty", and the creationists are quite willing to equate "can't know for certain" with "don't know".
When we transform god into a model, we now have a good set of tools for evaluating one model versus another. So yes, there's plenty of evidence that most any god in history exists, just as there's plenty of evidence (from applications of the ideal gas law) that atoms are infinitesimal points that do not interact with each other. Both models have some utility in explaining some phenomena, but with this formulation I can (usually) point to better models and then raise the question as to why the better models should not be preferred.
This doesn't eliminate all gods, of course, and if you have an a priori commitment to no gods existing I don't think you'll find it to be satisfactory.
What about the existence of Santa Claus and the tooth fairy? Is your belief in their existence equivalent to your belief in the existence of atoms?
Absolutely. I'm a scientist. I go with what works. If the best model available has Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, atoms and "spooky action at a distance", I'm down with that. If you come up with a better model that strips all of that out, I'll happily jump ship and use that instead.
Hell, I'll even believe a theory with numbers in it, and we still have no idea if those are platonic ideals, a useful subset of constructed fictions, or something stranger.
I think it's you who is holding religion to a different standard than just about everything else.
How so?
verbosestoic writes: I also used the "causation stops at the Big Bang" as an EXAMPLE of a view of causation that might be useful in physics but doesn't seem to match up to the actual concept; I accept that there are other possibilities. So far, about the only credible one I've seen is QM
QM is a huge subject area. What you've essentially just said is "About the only credible other possibility I've seen re causation is about three-fourths of modern high-energy physics." It is so general as to be meaningless.
You asked what reading Dr. Guth's book would get you. Briefly, a clue. At greater length and more specifically: An excellent description of the leading physical theory regarding how the universe we see today came to be, a description consistent with all observations and rigorously supported mathematically; one that neither posits that causation stops at the Big Bang, nor that "something" came from "nothing."
The reason Hawking isn't coming at the origin issue from the philosophical direction of how something can come from nothing, is that based on scientific observations and highly corroborated evidence, this is not the correct question. Quantum fluctuations, virtual particles and vacuum energy aren't "nothing."
You might also want to seek a more sophisticated understanding of causation (in the physics rather than the philosophical sense). Physicists certainly have said our current ability to reliably extrapolate causation into the past stops at the big bang, and there are more or less speculative physical theories that posit time itself beginning at the Big Bang, but these are not at all the same as saying causation did not exist until the Big Bang occurred.
Although the notion that causation can exist without time being a factor is strange to the layperson, a physics experiment commonly performed in college classrooms demonstrates it quite well. I'm sure you've heard of the "double slit experiment." This is where streams of electrons are fired at a target through two slits and produce an interference pattern, proving something called wave-particle duality. An extension of the experiment is to fire individual electrons through the slits at discrete intervals so it is assured no two electrons will physically interfere with each other in space-time. Yet as each individual electron strikes the target, there emerges, lo and behold, an interference pattern! Thus it is demonstrated that the causation of the interference is independent of (space-)time.
It is therefore entirely possible the chain of causation that led to the current universe could extend into an environment where time did not exist. In the face of such complex and exotic strangeness underpinning the real world, over-simplistic philosophical struggles regarding how something can arise from nothing are quaintly inadequate anachronisms, not relevant to observed physical phenomena and scientifically viable theories derived therefrom.
My apologies. Opera appeared to show my comment wasn't being accepted. Larry, would you be kind enough to remove the duplicates, or can someone tell me how to do it myself?
Thanks.
You know, there is a Babylon, Illinois - so technically Babylon was rebuilt. Oh, they moved from the original site a bit, but...
@lee_merrill:
Lee: "But I can make my case even if these other prophecies are wrong!"
No, because that would be cherry-picking the data. It'd be like me saying "look, these three smokers didn't die of cancer, therefore smoking isn't correlated with getting cancer". I'd be wilfully ignoring all the smokers that did die[1]. If you're going to count fulfilled prophecies in your favour, then you must count failed ones as well to be fair.
Nadiah wrote: "I agree with you that the Babylon prophecy is eerie".
To which Lee replied: "I’m hoping more people try, knowing what this might be making clear."
I know what you think - you think that's the Holy Spirit. However, unless the Holy Spirit is also at work when I get the heebie-jeebies when I see my own reflection in a dark mirror, then there may be another explanation.
The point _I'm_ making to you is, I acknowledge that the prophecy is eerie, and even as an atheist I felt creeped out by it, but not everything is as it seems at first glance. I get creeped out by my reflection in the dark because my brain goes "whoa, unexpected person that might kill you!" That reflex is rather useful for those rare cases where it's true, but that doesn't mean those reflexes are trustworthy.
So, are you going to go through that list of failed prophecies I gave you, or are you not that serious about your claim that prophecy is a good proof of God?
---
[1] Not to mention that I have neglected to use a "control", which is like comparing my smokers to the likelihood of dying of cancer when you're not a smoker, but that's probably an advanced topic in this context.
@Omnicrom:
"You carefully ignore that problem by pinning your faith on Babylon still being uninhabited. Does that mean that if Babylon is inhabited once more you will renounce your faith? Interstingly you also do not address Nadiah's second paragraph where she attacks the validity of your position. Why is that?"
Nah, if Babylon gets inhabited again, it the joins the category of 'failed prophecies that we can choose not to count' ;-P
@lee_merrill
Nadiah wrote: "So, are you going to go through that list...?"
Oops, I see now that you're doing Damascus up-thread a bit. My apologies, I missed that. Carry on.
Plantinga, WLC, haughty Haught, Swinburne and Ward make solecistic, sosphisticated sophistry- ignorant, complicated, fallaciousness. They are underrated as sophists whilst overrated as theologians-philosophers. I take them on.
http:// carneades.aimoo.com
http:// Ignostic Morgan's Blog.worpress.com
http:// democritus.posterous.com
Post a Comment