Pharyngula

Posted by: Rich | June 9, 2008 1:18 PM

Some associated well-poisoning

(1) FtK Loves Vox (she calls him an "Alpha Male")
(2) http://bp0.blogger.com/_c8hGP_Vc8nA/Rssw8TByBEI/AAAAAAAAAHE/BZkYzaa-CQg/s400/Vox.jpe

Here he is looking like a bell-end
(3) Kristine is a witch. BURN HER!

Posted by: Dennis N | June 9, 2008 1:21 PM

And the sock puppet incursion is getting annoying.

Posted by: Aegis | June 9, 2008 1:25 PM

Damn, couldn't stop the post: "Dawkins' " , not "Dawkin's "

Posted by: jsn | June 9, 2008 1:32 PM

So what you are saying, PZ, is that you're a chickenshit. Unsurprising.

Posted by: Ric | June 9, 2008 1:38 PM

It has been well established that VD is a racist, secist lunatic. PZ has nothing to gain by debating him, except possibly fleas (which one gets by lying down with dogs).

Posted by: Irene Delse | June 9, 2008 1:40 PM

You have to wonder at the delusion in somebody like VD. He's still pushing the same fallacies that Austin Cline debunked 5 years ago...
http://atheism.about.com/b/2003/11/18/the-irrational-atheist.htm

Posted by: Holbach | June 9, 2008 1:46 PM

Screw those morons. I'll make a condition for a debate with these insane retards: You bring your god with you as a second and then we'll have a debate. Why waste brain cells on these demented shits?

Posted by: Steve Zara | June 9, 2008 1:47 PM

#3
For God's sake, why doesn't VD give us any meaningful argument for God, instead of offering another blather-session?

If you have the stomach to read his book, he has tried.

It is all highly confused nonsense though.

Posted by: Davis | June 9, 2008 1:53 PM

The traditional religioso refrain has always been "the lord works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform." But now that they want to argue from a scientific perspective, they have to lie, lie, and lie some more.

I would like to have a word with the Great Designer about my wisdom teeth.

Posted by: Chuck | June 9, 2008 1:59 PM

If he's willing to engage in a verbal debate, there's no reason why he shouldn't engage in a written one.

Posted by: BlueIndependent | June 9, 2008 2:01 PM

"For God's sake, why doesn't VD give us any meaningful argument for God, instead of offering another blather-session?

Because they want to feel like they're actually thinking through things, and making intellectual headway. They are not, as is obvious, but has that ever stopped conservatives? If they're losing, they set up biased "debate" sessions where they can try and use argument ad populum and a couple flicks of the mic switch to prove their claims. They know that doing it on a blog will not be visible out in public, and that's where they like screaming and whining.

Posted by: Brian W. | June 9, 2008 2:10 PM

I said this before but i don't think it can be said enough. Next time your at the bookstore and see his book look at the back cover. It says something along the lines of "Girls who have been raped are 50 times more likely to commit suicide than ones that were raised Catholic."

That's how this idiot thinks.

Posted by: dziban | June 9, 2008 2:13 PM

PZ, have you got a copy of that debate you had with VD? ...Vox Day, not venereal disease, although they are equally disgusting. In any case, I'd like to give a listen to the destruction.

Posted by: Dennis N | June 9, 2008 2:21 PM

I didn't know Vox Day was part of the academic science world.

Posted by: Tim B. | June 9, 2008 2:24 PM

Just curious: what kind of evidence would constitute proof of a god or set theism on a firm footing? I remember someone (maybe here?) remarking that a distinct cosmic message via star alignment or something like that would qualify. What else? I'm stumped.

Posted by: SC | June 9, 2008 2:28 PM

Vox Day is to academic science as Ben Stein is to Holocaust scholarship.

Posted by: thisisfunny | June 9, 2008 2:29 PM

Vitalism and teleology.
Also, read up on a the hypothesis of quantum consciousness.
The Penrose-Hameroff orchestrated objective reduction model.

Posted by: Mena | June 9, 2008 2:34 PM

I have actually given up on the creationists. I really don't think that it's any more possible to teach them how to follow a reasoned well-documented argument (hopefully they don't end up on juries!) than it would be to teach my cat how to count to two. There really just seems to be something wrong with their brains. The creationists that is, not the cat. Cats are not dumb, just different. Creationists are dumb and more.

Posted by: Bad | June 9, 2008 2:38 PM

I heartily endorse the idea of not engaging in talk radio debates: if people have decent arguments, both sides can better present their cases and counters in writing.

But folks here shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that their opponents arguments are a patently dumb and preposterous as hyperbole and content-free dismissal allows. That's a good way to get lazy and sloppy.

Posted by: Neil | June 9, 2008 2:39 PM

Re: Irene Delse #12

Thanks for mentioning Austin Cline's work. He only deals with one article as far as I know, but that is already more attention than Vox Day is worth, except as a case study of the kind of ridiculous, hateful dogshit that passes for conservative "thought" these days. Austin's writing is always clear, and his logic is as clean as any I've read. I don't know how he finds the time or the patience to do what he does, but it is appreciated.

Posted by: Alex | June 9, 2008 2:43 PM

"Just curious: what kind of evidence would constitute proof of a god or set theism on a firm footing?"

But that's exactly the core of the issue. They need to produce something falsifiable. That's impossible when the argument is about something "outside" of Nature. It's a complete fallacy. It's hard to believe that anyone takes the claim seriously after spending about 2 minutes thinking it through. If a deity was to be proven, it would be shown to be a merely "physical" (read: of Nature) phenomenon. This would make the deity forever entangled with its creation, but it needs to be separate from its creation because it "existed" before it created Nature. It's a really stupifying argument.

Posted by: JeffreyD | June 9, 2008 2:48 PM

I just do not understand the problem, sure it is embarrassing, but the way to deal with VD is to treat it quickly. A couple of shots of a Penicillin derivative usually cures it quickly.

What? Oh. Really? Well, the advice above might still work.

Ciao y'all

Posted by: SteveG | June 9, 2008 2:53 PM

I really respect you P.Z. but I disagree with your decision here. I realize that not all venues are set up the way they really should be set up to deal with controversial discussion fairly. However, on the other hand you have an opportunity, even with the imposed handicap, to present your position to people who will otherwise not hear your position presented as it should be presented at all. Yes, the station may be an advocate of a position opposite of yours. Yes, they may bring the other guy back later to talk without criticism so he can try to clean up after you expose his errors.

But that still means you passed an opportunity by. I hope you will reconsider, if you can. I say this because I know what you can bring to the table when you are in the discussion.

I do want to tell you that my attitude toward this is influenced a bit by my own personal history. I used to be a young earth creationist. Ever since finding my way out of that morass I have always found it a bit irritating when scientists take the ivory tower escape hatch (we don't need to deal with those dirty creationists, we'll just ignore them). If scientists and others who take science seriously would have openly confronted creationists head-on early on in the early 1960s and thereafter, I sincerely believe that we would not be in the mess we're in right now, because I don't think creationism would have grown as it has. Creationism has grown up among about two generations now because it was basically allowed to grow unchecked by scientists who didn't want to "get their hands dirty" by getting down in the trenches to deal with the dirty creationists. (I'm also reminded of several years ago in Kansas when scientists en masse decided to bail out of dealing with the problem because, again, they didn't want to get their hands dirty because the venue was political rather than a proper scientific venue. This is just a wrong-headed approach to dealing with the problem. Face the problem squarely and confront them with the forthright criticism they deserve. Hit them on every front with all artillery guided shells programmed for their targets.)

At the same time I fully realize that in specific cases there are pragmatic considerations and judgment calls based on those considerations that must be made, and there will be disagreements at the margins. But I want to cast my vote for influencing effective spokesmen to jump in with both two feet - even when the venue is not ideal - in order to keep injecting some sanity into the mix of discussion in the culture.

Okay I'll shut up now.

Posted by: keith | June 9, 2008 2:55 PM

I don't want Pee Wee Myers to debate . I simply want him to announce that he has cancer in both balls, liver, pancreas and brain, so I can go get drunk.

Posted by: Dennis N | June 9, 2008 2:59 PM

Brenda, can you make just one post without being condescending and arrogant?

Posted by: John Huey | June 9, 2008 3:03 PM

Formal debates are fun entertainment but, really, they decide nothing except you is the better debater. I joined the debate club in high school and the biggest challenge for me was when I was saddled with the position that I didn't believe in. The idea that I could "win" a debate using arguments that were wrong but persuasive proved to me that debates are not the way to resolve an issue.

Posted by: dinkum | June 9, 2008 3:07 PM

Wasted a lunch hour over there.
Mena's right. "Black hole of stupid."
Debate is futile with that bunch. They don't use words such as "reason" or "evidence" the way one might expect, so there is no baseline for communication. If it doesn't confirm their presuppositions, it doesn't exist or didn't happen.
Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig likes it anyway.

Posted by: Bob L | June 9, 2008 3:12 PM

Keith in #48; even with testicular cancer he'd still have more manhood than you do Keith. PZ is the one out in public, not posting vicious little anonymous comments like your' cowardly ass.

Posted by: kermit | June 9, 2008 3:15 PM

Alex@42: "If a deity was to be proven, it would be shown to be a merely "physical" (read: of Nature) phenomenon. This would make the deity forever entangled with its creation, but it needs to be separate from its creation because it "existed" before it created Nature. It's a really stupifying argument."

Not necessarily stupifying. When I was a kid - long before personal computers - I envisioned Heaven and God as a sort of Uber world, the "Real" world, and ours a simulation. Think of the Matrix virtual world, and similar books and movies. The programmer (or game-player) could manifest in any way in our universe, and do *anything (as far as we could tell) with no effort. Angels and trumpets? Easy. Wipe out a whole galaxy? Sure! Just reconfigure the game.

But we have no reason to think there is anything *like this; I only claim that it is not incoherent and the physical appearance of such a god would not constrain him to material limitations - it could be an avatar of sorts. Of course, Yahweh could also be Norbert the nerd playing a game of Sims 47 in his mom's basement. Just because an entity is omnipotent doesn't mean he is admirable or trustworthy. How could we tell?

Posted by: raven | June 9, 2008 3:16 PM

I just skip over anything Vox Day posts. My impression is that he is very seriously mentally ill. And just might go berserk in a Cho Seung Paul Hill kind of way.

I just do not understand the problem, sure it is embarrassing, but the way to deal with VD is to treat it quickly. A couple of shots of a Penicillin derivative usually cures it quickly.

What? Oh. Really? Well, the advice above might still work.

Not that kind of VD. You treat cockroaches, ants, termites and Vox Day's with pesticides. A can of Raid should do it. Retreat if necessary because some insects are unresponsive to insecticides due to evolved resistance.

Posted by: Interrobang | June 9, 2008 3:19 PM

If scientists and others who take science seriously would have openly confronted creationists head-on early on in the early 1960s and thereafter, I sincerely believe that we would not be in the mess we're in right now

Nice victim-blaming, there, SteveG. Sheesh.

The thing is, PZ has the right of it, because you can't debate these guys: They don't debate. They lie, cheat, quote-mine, cherry-pick, stack the venue, do the Gish Gallop (spew out so many falsehoods at once that there's not enough time in a standard debate format to address them all), project, slander, and rack up full cards on the Logical Fallacy Bingo. You can't even confront them effectively, because they don't play fair, so anybody who does is at an automatic handicap.

Personally, I don't think anything scientists could have done would have helped; the resurgence in creationism has very little to do with science and very much to do with the organised campaign the US religious and political right wing mounted starting in the late 1960s to essentially undo the New Deal and the Great Society. They realised very early on that in the religious right, they had a huge bloc of easily-manipulable voters, and exploited the hell out of them while they were busily funneling the proceeds of their vast fund-raising efforts into promoting the religious right's ideology.

You want some people to blame for this, don't blame scientists, blame Richard Viguerie and Howard Ahmanson and Richard Mellon Scaife and Joseph Coors et cetera et cetera... They're the ones who made Duane Gish (and, by extension, Vox Day) possible.

Posted by: windy | June 9, 2008 3:21 PM

I could provide you with an actual "not insane" argument for the existence of a "God" if you like. On the proviso that it is understood I would not be making the argument as my own. I don't believe in god. I'm not sure it would be accessible to many people here though as it calls for a bit more logic and philosophy than many are accustomed to. It's basically a reductio ad absurdum against the principle of sufficient reason.

I might regret asking this, but let's say your argument works out, how is this an argument for God?

Posted by: CalGeorge | June 9, 2008 3:37 PM

"We often continue believing in things--and this is true of religions as well as ideologies--long after the circumstances that gave rise to the beliefs have disappeared." - Joseph Heller.

The time for debate about God was over a long, long time ago. There's nothing to debate anymore.

We have moved light years beyond Vox Day's silly ideas about God. The only topic worth debating is why he clings to them with such stubborn ferocity.

Posted by: Alex | June 9, 2008 3:42 PM

Pardon my typos. Geesh. Gettin' sloppy.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 9, 2008 3:43 PM

There is no need to dig those up. Any "atheist" who is impressed by his style does not understand what he is doing.

The reality is that Dinesh D'Souza is good at playing to a gallery stuffed with theists: he knows what they want to hear, he says it "passionately", and they love it. He's not interested in the fraction of the audience who'll sit there appalled at the stream of non-sequiturs and tired old bullshit, he's interested in the majority, who wouldn't recognise a logical fallacy snarling in their face after it had bitten their balls off.

What makes D'Souza an odious slimy little shit is that he pretends that debates are about having the best arguments, which is like Bill Shatner claiming to have captained a spaceship with phasers and teleporters.

Posted by: jase | June 9, 2008 3:48 PM

Keith,
In the immortal words of David Mamet: " I wouldn't piss in your mouth if your tongue was on fire."
Obviously you fell down as an example of a good christian. So here's another SNL Point/Counterpoint quote just for you:" ...you ignorant slut. Had I been alive when your mother concieved you, I not only would have supplied the coat hanger, but the vacuum as well." G'night Dickless.

Posted by: jase | June 9, 2008 3:50 PM

oops, two for the price of one...

Posted by: OctoberMermaid | June 9, 2008 3:53 PM

#73 Brenda,

"There was no attempt on my part to be condescending at all."

But this seemed kind of condescending...

"I'm not sure it would be accessible to many people here though as it calls for a bit more logic and philosophy than many are accustomed to."

Posted by: Barklikeadog | June 9, 2008 3:54 PM

That's STRIKE. sorry

Posted by: speedwell | June 9, 2008 3:59 PM

Hmm... Vox Day supposedly has a zinger of an argument that he'll only divulge when the circumstances suit him? And Brenda is the same sort of coy tease? Coincidence?

Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | June 9, 2008 4:02 PM

Here's another one to add to the "no debate" list:

Yomin Postelnik has proof of God

Posted by: Lord Zero | June 9, 2008 4:04 PM

Well, PZ, waiting for evidence to come
with open arms its the way of the scientist...
But when they are shooting you with
bullshit instead of logical factual evidence...
Anyway, i feel more anger than pity for them
actually.

Posted by: Quiet Desperation | June 9, 2008 4:06 PM

It's the way of all ideologues, left and right, strange and charmed.

They fire shotgun blasts all over the place, each pellet requiring a whole debate all on its own. They are little more than the "fun sized" version of a chanting mob.

I recall a debate back where I got my undergraduate degree about SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative). The "pro" side was a quiet little bespectacled researcher from the university. The "anti" side was some sort of political scientist and seasoned speaker brought in from outside.

The audience was constantly cheering the anti-guy constantly and booing the pro-guy. Eventually, the "pro" professor was just shouted down by the audience if he tried to say anything. It was ugly.

But the anti-guy hardly ever even mentioned SDI or the feasibility of its technology. And when he did it was bullshit, like saying that anti-missile lasers in orbit could be used to incinerate entire cities.

Never mind that, you know, that's the designed-for functionality of the *missiles* the lasers would attempt to stop.

All he had was quips and slogans and anecdotes, and as far as I could tell I was the only one to see it. The whole audience was lapping up the bullshit like cats with cream.

And it's only gotten worse since then (mid 1980's)

And I wasn't even pro-SDI. I was ambivalent about it, actually. That event, though, was the beginning of three things for me.

1. A life long devotion to skepticism.
2. A healthy case of misanthropy.
3. No longer believing the lie that a university is a place of higher learning, at least from the angle of critical thinking.

Posted by: Alex | June 9, 2008 4:07 PM

"All arguments for a god or gods are arguments for god whether they succeed or fail are they not?"

Let's try something:

"All arguments for a deity or deities are arguments for deity whether they succeed or fail are they not?"

I'm not sure that makes sense, unless the deity you are referring to happens to have "god" as its name. The religious always refer to their deity in such ways. I guess it makes them feel better about their choice in deity.

Posted by: WRMartin | June 9, 2008 4:08 PM

How about a simpler 'proof' for VD and Brenda and Jsn and Keith and etc.?
No need to prove to us that a god exists just prove that you believe a god exists.

And Keith, come on now, getting drunk shouldn't require you to wait for and then ingest all those cancerous organs - find yourself a liquor store or brew/distill your own.
Getting drunk: You are doing it wrong!

Posted by: Blake Stacey | June 9, 2008 4:13 PM

A recent review of Hameroffian nonsense, illustrating how thoroughly it has tanked, can be found in A. Litt et al. (2006).

(Curse you, link limit!)

Posted by: qbsmd | June 9, 2008 4:16 PM

Still waiting for someone to try this solution:
http://cectic.com/105.html

Posted by: OctoberMermaid | June 9, 2008 4:17 PM

#93

"Vox is a smart guy, or appears to be,"

This is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, but.. oh! Blast it, you already thought of that. You're always one step ahead of all of us!

Posted by: Steve Zara | June 9, 2008 4:22 PM

Actually, I don't doubt that Vox is a smart guy in various ways. However, as Michael Shermer has pointed out, the smarter you are, the more you can build up complex arguments for your delusions, and boy does Vox put effort into that.

Posted by: Leigh Shryock | June 9, 2008 4:27 PM

@Brenda: Ahh, yes, but, if a claim goes against everything we know, then the evidence has to outweigh the evidence in favor of the current knowledge, or at least be enough to significantly shift it. Evidence is indeed still evidence, no matter the weight, but, extraordinary claims that are supposedly supported by evidence need to be treated with healthy skepticism, to ensure that the 'evidence' isn't fabricated.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is just much shorter to say.

Posted by: unicow | June 9, 2008 4:36 PM

@ #93 Brenda

Vox is a smart guy, or appears to be, which is why... he is on solid ground.

Huh?

Even if one granted that VD is "a smart guy" (and he may indeed be about certain matters), that in no way leads to what he says being "on solid ground."

Smart guys say stupid things all the time. Intentionally misunderstanding how the word "extraordinary" is used in order to play silly semantic games rather than address the issue at hand strikes me as pretty stupid indeed.

Posted by: Brenda | June 9, 2008 4:43 PM

Assumptions and Reductio

My intent is to construct a reductio ad absurdum against PSR. Not all arguments are straightforward conditionals leading to a conclusion. A reductio assumes that p, derives a contradiction (either not-p, or "q and not-q") from p, and thereby proves that not-p. Unfortunately, PSR does imply a contradiction, and is therefore false. We will need some background assumptions, each of which are quite certainly true (even more certain than PSR), and I will explain as needed. They are as follows:

(A1) There is at least one contingently true proposition.
(A2) Any true conjunction with at least one contingently true conjunct is itself a contingently true proposition.
(A3) Every true proposition is either contingently true or necessarily true.
(A4) The following inference form is valid:
(i) Necessarily, P
(ii) Necessarily, P only if Q
(iii) Hence, Necessarily, Q
(iv)

If any of these fails to be quite obvious, it is not (A2) or (A4), as they can be defended on purely logical grounds. (A4) is a modally strengthened version of modus ponens. If P is true in every world, and in every world P implies Q, then in every world, Q is true. (A2) is equally obvious. The combined statement, "I have blue eyes and two plus two equals four" is contingent, since my having blue eyes is contingent, and the combined truth is therefore possibly false, despite the necessarily true conjunct. The motto is "contingency infects." (A3) is an exhaustive distinction: if P is true, then either (i) it is possible that p is false, or (ii) it is not possible that p is false. (A1) seems brutally obvious to me, as well, but we will come back to it. The conditions of PSR will also be used against it (as they are necessary to it), and will be (PSR.i), (PSR.ii), etc.

We are now ready to construct a reductio on PSR. The defense of each line will follow in square brackets. Lines that are conclusions will be preceded by "hence." Most of the actual argument is in the defenses, so be sure to check them to understand what is being said and why these conclusions are true.

(1) Let P be the conjunction of all contingently true propositions. [(A1)]
(2) Hence, P is itself a contingently true proposition. [(1),(A2)]
(3) Hence, there is a sufficient reason for P, hereby named S, which is a true proposition. [(2),(PSR.i)]
(4) Hence, S is either contingently true or necessarily true. [(3), (A3)]
(5) It is not the case that S is necessarily true. [justification pending]
(6) Hence, S is contingently true. [(4),(5)]
(7) It is not the case that S is contingently true. [justification pending]
(8) Hence, at least one of our assumptions (including PSR) is false. [reductio complete, (6) and (7)]

I must still defend premises five and seven, each of which has its own reductio.

(5a) Necessarily, S. [Assumption toward reductio]
(5b) Hence, necessarily, (if S, then P). [(3), (PSR.ii)]
(5c) Hence, necessarily, P. [(5a),(5b),(A4)]
(5d) Hence, it is not the case that necessarily, P. [(2)]
Hence, it is not the case that S is necessarily true. [Reductio complete, (5c) and (5d), therefore not-(5a)]

(7a) S is a contingent truth. [Assumption toward reductio]
(7b) Hence, S is a contingent conjunct of P. [(1), (7a)]
(7c) Hence, it is not the case that S is a contingent conjunct of P. [(2), (3), (PSR.iii)]
(7) Hence, it is not the case that S is contingently true. [Reductio complete, (7b) and (7c), therefore not-(7a)]

Take as much time as necessary to check the logic. Not only is it valid, but decently easy to follow, looking back and forth a bit. There are no tricks here. So, the upshot: we must give up one of (A1)-(A4) or PSR. (A2)-(A4) are simply not candidates for removal. So, we must bite one of two very nasty bullets. The reductio was designed to show only this: "Necessarily, (A1) only if Not-PSR." However, since any necessary truth can serve as its own sufficient reason, Not-(A1) also entails PSR. Also, since PSR could be false only if some contingent truth went unexplained, Not-PSR entails (A1). So, we are left with our choice spelled out: "Necessarily, (A1) if and only if Not-PSR!"

So what are the costs? If we deny PSR, we must affirm the existence of at least one brute fact. Since there are currently no ways to reduce bruteness in the world, we have no idea just how many of the contingent truths are brute. We give up the intuition founding science and philosophy that "everything has a reason." Some things just are. This may be applied to existential claims, not only propositions: some things may exist for no reason; some properties may be exemplified for no reason whatsoever. That should frustrate anyone with a rational, empirical, or inquiring mind. However, the other option is far more costly. I assert that it is a bullet far too large to bite.

Our other option is to deny (A1). What does this mean? The common term for the theory that there are only necessary truths is "necessitarianism." This implies that nothing could have even possibly been otherwise than it in fact is! Do not make the mistake of confusing this with an infinitely weaker, distant cousin, "determinism." Determinism holds that all the facts about the future are fixed. There are many common flavors of determinism, many of which are philosophical staples, and have been for a very long time. Theological determinism was popular with the Calvinists, who realized that if God knows everything about the future, then the future must be fixed. A scientific version, which increased in popularity from the Enlightenment until the advent of quantum mechanics, was causal determinism, which holds that "the determinate state of the world at a time and the laws of nature at that time together determine a unique future." That is, the laws of causation hold everything in a determined flow, fixed by the laws of nature and the way the world was. Whatever the flavor, determinism is relatively benign. Most modern philosophers hold a view called "compatibilism," which holds that determinism and free will are compatible; that both may be jointly true. This is heavily contrary to most common sense and intuition, but has been argued very well. In fact, I subscribe to determinism, compatibilism, and the theory that we have free will. One need not believe each of them to believe they are compatible, but the arguments involved are numerous and involved. There is no room for them here. What is important, however, is that necessitarianism is certainly incompatible with free will! Without freedom, there is no responsibility, no morality. In fact, if necessitarianism is true and God exists, then God has no free will or freedom whatsoever, as well. Even He couldn't do anything. Everything would be its own sufficient reason. This is infinitely stronger than simply positing that everything is (actually) fixed, it's positing that everything is necessarily fixed. Denying PSR is vastly preferable to denying (A1). A little randomness is much better than no metaphysical possibility (aside from what is actually true). It is much easier to stomach, and also much easier to comprehend. Although both alternatives are unfriendly to philosophy and science, denying PSR still leaves room for both, whereas denying (A1) does not. So why was all this necessary to show? This brings us to our less popular, but still satisfactory alternative, the Principle of Necessary Reason.

Posted by: Brenda | June 9, 2008 4:45 PM

The Principle of Necessary Reason

The Principle of Necessary Reason (PNR) is an attempt to capture the basic intuition that contingent beings depend for their existence on something other than themselves. This intuition must be salvaged somehow. This replacement will work, and it even gives another reason to support the denial of PSR over the denial of (A1). The main idea, here, is that no contingent thing is self-dependent, and so whenever we find a contingent thing we can expect to find something else, as well.

(PNR) "For any x, if x is a contingent thing, then there is some individual upon which x depends, namely y, such that y is distinct from x and from every contingent part of x."

First, I must make some things clear. Most importantly, PNR does not exclude the possibility that some x depends on some y, and yet both x and y are contingent things. That is, the thing upon which a contingent thing depends for its existence may also be contingent (of course, the latter thing will also have something upon which it depends for its existence, too). Unlike PSR, this is not about propositions, it is about concrete entities; that is, things, objects, individuals, those things which are not abstract. The distinction is a difficult one to make. The easiest way is to make a list of all the abstract things, and to call concrete things "everything else." I doubt that I can compose a full list, but to get an idea, abstracta include propositions, properties, symbols, relations, numbers, classes, concepts, universals, etc. Concretia include everyday objects (rocks, trees, paper), people, individual souls (if they exist), protons, stars, forces, particulars, etc. That is, "Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet" is an abstract object, but my copy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a concrete object. Some say that concretia are spatiotemporal (exist in space and time), and abstracta are not. Again, this has a rich and long history in philosophy, and is not easily glossed over, but that will have to do. The reasoning, here, is that abstracta cannot enter into the proper kinds of relations (dependency relations) with concrete objects. I cannot, for example, depend for my existence on the number two.

Upon noticing the similarities between PSR and PNR, especially that they represent the same intuition, one may think that the objections that work against PSR would also work against PNR. However, there is a key difference between them - basically, that PSR says that for any contingent thing, there is something else which is sufficient for its existence, whereas PNR says that for any contingent thing there is something else which is necessary for its existence. Recall the difference early on in the paper, and how they relate to conditionals and logic. The arguments used against PSR have no force against PNR. Also, PNR is simpler and seems to even better capture the intuition that contingent things are dependent things. It doesn't have the long history of PSR, nor could it really be said to have the same foundational status with regard to science, but it represents a very powerful intuition, common sense, a replacement of PSR, and a way to reclaim the dependency of contingent things. It would be a strange and self-defeating tactic to jump off the boat now, but there is no definitive proof of PNR. However, the cost of its denial is immense, and I doubt that anyone left without PSR would seriously wish to doubt PNR. As such, I submit that PNR is true, and expect anyone else who has stayed with me up to this point to follow suit. Now that the paper is 90% finished, it's time to get to the argument for which it was originally written. PNR guarantees the existence of a necessarily existing concrete entity upon which our universe depends for its existence!

Posted by: freelunch | June 9, 2008 4:47 PM

Quiet-

And after billions and billions of dollars, the SDI still doesn't work.

That doesn't excuse the bad job on either side of the discussion, but reality is always a good test of an argument.

Posted by: Steve P | June 9, 2008 4:49 PM

The level of intelligence from the typical Vox Day Blog comments

"Oh, for cryi'n out loud! I don't care what atheists think or why. They can all go happily to hell for all I care, it's not my job to argue with them. I just don't want them forcing their godless and homophilic ways into my life, restricting my freedom of speech and association. I say let them bugger each other all they like so long as I can teach my children that it's immoral and that they are not required to do business or associate with fags."

We couldnt make this stuff up better ourselves folks.

Posted by: BlueIndependent | June 9, 2008 4:53 PM

@ Brenda:

The use of "extraordinary" is really quite appropriate, beyond the reasons expressed by #100. You should know this though, and further, would not god's ability to prove him/her/itself and his/her/its extraordinary powers BE extraordinary? If this being is so utterly powerful beyond measure, is that not extraordinary? You're arguing yourself into a hole.

But again, the challenges that come against evolution here are the aprsing of language, not the parsing of ideas. Evolution has been parsed for over 150 years. Creationism has been parsed for far longer. Only the former has reproducable, documentable, traceable evidence. The latter has nothing but high hopes, a bunch of hand-wringing publication, and an article that circumvented a proper peer review.

Your point of view will not be taken seriously until evidence is given. End of story. Please stop asking for a free ride on thought.

Posted by: Longtime Lurker | June 9, 2008 4:53 PM

"The fact that the Northern Alliance radio show actually thinks Vox Day is a credible voice for conservative thought tells me right away that there is something wrong with them, and no, I'm not going to trust them at all."

Conservative thought is an oxymoron. "Bigotry, stupidity, and cupidity" is all they have.

Debating a loon on a right-wing playing field, where the troglodytes can edit your statements, is not the way to go, so kudos PZ. Vox Day claiming that you are scared is like Bill O'Reilly claiming that Bill Moyers is afraid to enter the "No Spin Zone". By the way, anyone see the video of Bill Moyers pwning an O'Reilly producer?

Via Crooks and Liars:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/08/fox-news-producer-ambushes-bill-moyers-gets-taste-of-his-own-medicine/

Posted by: Prof MTH | June 9, 2008 4:58 PM

PNR guarantees the existence of a necessarily existing concrete entity upon which our universe depends for its existence!

Even if we grant PNR is true (which it is not) it does not get us to a sentient entity that can be called "deity". That requires at least one extra step if not more. Furthermore, if there is a necessary entity, that entity could be strings, quantum particles, or whatever turns out to be the base constituents of the universe. PNR being false does not entail that there cannot be necessary entities only that we cannot prove it a priori.

Posted by: BlueIndependent | June 9, 2008 5:06 PM

Brenda @ 111:

How is that providing ANY evidence? How is what you posted even considered a deep argument? That says that a god must exist; WHY? Answer that question. Universal soul? Provide evidence. How is there evidence that the universe depends on this god? What IS the evidence for this? What you posted is classic god of the gaps. The universe exists, ergo a god created it. That solves nothing, tells us nothing, gets us nothing.

The existence of a god has been tossed around for centuries, and the thinking in favor of a god existing ultimately fails all tests, other than the one that begs unevidenced belief.

A better question is, why should you, Brenda, persist in worshipping you god over another? If you are so high-minded as to take what you posted as deep consideration, than why are you even an adherent of the religion you are? Methinks you would be wiser to be an agnostic, given what you posted.

Posted by: CalGeorge | June 9, 2008 5:07 PM

But many Gods, including Yahweh, are themselves necessarily existing beings upon whom the universe depends for its existence.

Yeah, funny how that works. Wouldn't want Yahweh to be some contingent being who isn't in complete control of things.

He might not have quite the same power over the mass of gullible idiots being told to kowtow to him.

Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 9, 2008 5:19 PM

Brenda,

I'm actually quite happy with the negation of the PSR, and with the idea that there are "brute facts" - or at least, I don't immediately see any problem with accepting this. However, setting that aside, there are two points I'd like to raise:
1) I don't understand your last indented sentence:
"So why was all this necessary to show? This brings us to our less popular, but still satisfactory alternative, the Principle of Necessary Reason."
I hadn't come across the PNR before, but googling it, I find this formulation:
"There is at least some reason for every contingent fact."
- which looks like a weaker form of the PSR. Is that where the argument goes - that we can't have the PNR (which is held to be incompatible with classical theism because God could have chosen not to create the world), so we must be content with the PSR - which presumably isn't incompatible with classical theism. Have I interpreted you correctly here?

2) A possible weak spot in the argument (I'm not saying it's the only one) seems to me to be at the start of the main argument:

(1) Let P be the conjunction of all contingently true propositions.

The problem is, there are an awful lot of contingently true propositions. Consider the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. Let's assume the actual value (which IIRC is about 1800) is not necessarily what it is. Then we can form at least C contingently true propositions (where C is the cardinality of the real numbers), of the form:
"The ratio of the masses of the proton and electron is greater than r" - where r is any real number less than the actual value. So we're assuming we can form a conjunction of at least C (i.e. uncountably many) propositions - and I suspect you might be able to push it higher, and also that at some point things like the axiom of choice are going to become relevant. Hm, now I think about it, since a conjunction of one contingent and one necessary proposition is contingent, and I suspect there are just too many necessary propositions for them to form a set - they have to be a proper class - the contingent propositions also form a proper class. Now A1 looks a lot less obvious, don't you think? When one first comes across it, one thinks automatically of a finite conjunction.

Anyway, thanks for this, very interesting (at least to me). What do you think of the above line of (very much off the top of my head) reasoning?

Posted by: Bob L | June 9, 2008 5:25 PM

Is that content free nonsense Brenda posted Vox's amazing "proof" of God's existence?

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 9, 2008 5:28 PM

Brenda,

great demonstration to conclude that something must have been necessary for our existence. Wonderful.
Tell me, does the brilliant demonstration also include any clear picture of what that something was, an eternal false bubbling vacuum, or a homosexual hating bearded sky daddy ?

Why do philosophers always have to complicate things so much when they start thinking about these matters (no offense Prof MH, I respect Philopsophers very much, but not when they waste their time with this kind of stuff...).

Posted by: Patricia | June 9, 2008 5:32 PM

Brenda is exhibiting strong symptems of Kenny, i.e. all promise and no product.

Posted by: Carlie | June 9, 2008 5:33 PM

Brenda, you keep saying "low hanging fruit", but have yet to manage to pluck any - all you do is keep calling it names and saying you drink its milkshake. (Oh noez! Another SNL reference!) I haven't seen anything at all from you that resembles a cogent point, period. So what point exactly are you trying to make? If you write slowly, maybe my little brain can follow along.

Posted by: CalGeorge | June 9, 2008 5:38 PM

But I maintain that all that is required for it to be God is that the Universe depends on it for its existence and that it is necessarily existing and concrete.

What "is required for it to be God" is a culture that uses that name the same way other cultures spoke of Ra or Zeus.

You've introduced a culturally relative entity into your "necessary" argument - without any explanation.

Posted by: Alex | June 9, 2008 5:39 PM

"Unless someone can establish the limitations of the universe as a whole, it would be presumptuous to point to the cosmos and declare it incapable of existing without an external cause." Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, Wisdom Without Answers, (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998), p. 39

Putting a requirement on existence that it needed/needs to be caused by some external agent seems presumptuous indeed.

Posted by: Prof MTH | June 9, 2008 5:44 PM

Why do philosophers always have to complicate things so much when they start thinking about these matters...

PSR was first formalized by Leibniz however it is a pervasive hidden assumption prior to Leibniz. Descartes heavily relied upon it.

Posted by: Paul W. | June 9, 2008 5:52 PM

Tell me, does the brilliant demonstration also include any clear picture of what that something was, an eternal false bubbling vacuum, or a homosexual hating bearded sky daddy ?

That's a nice pithy way of saying what I was saying.

Why do philosophers always have to complicate things so much when they start thinking about these matters (no offense Prof MH, I respect Philopsophers very much, but not when they waste their time with this kind of stuff...).

Most philosophers don't do this crap. For all practical purposes, Kant and Hume killed this sort of argument hundreds of years ago. They only beat the dead horse because kooks like Plantinga keep trying to ride it.

Then you have a few kooks like Plantinga who get a lot of press. (Notably at places like Notre Dame or Wesleyan.) If you say you've proven the existence of God using state-of-the-art modal logic, you can get written up in Newsweek. Sigh.

Then there are a few philosophers who go back and clean up the mess, much like P.Z. rebutting creationist kooks.

Most philosophers are not very happy about this state of affairs. They get blamed for a few religious kooks, plus a moderate number of postmodernist and lit-crit "philosophers" who are actually in English departments, not philosophy departments.

That said, this sort of argument does occasionally serve a good purpose in helping clarify logic. The basic rule is that if your logic lets you prove the existence of God, you should look for a problem with your logic. (For example, that you're treating existence as a normal predicate; finding fallacies in seemingly valid logical proofs led to the formalization of existence as a quantifier, not a predicate.)

Posted by: Mena | June 9, 2008 6:02 PM

The only "necessary beings" that matter to me are the people, plants, and insects who are involved in the production of chocolate. See, gods exist! Or not.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 9, 2008 6:05 PM

This picture of Vox nicely summarizes his arguments, it seems.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 9, 2008 6:15 PM

Just stick with truth as consistency or truth as procedure. That should be enough.

Truth?

Man, Brenda, is your concept of science naïve...

----------------

Brenda quoting Hudson:

Denying PSR is vastly preferable to denying (A1). A little randomness is much better than no metaphysical possibility (aside from what is actually true). It is much easier to stomach, and also much easier to comprehend. Although both alternatives are unfriendly to philosophy and science, denying PSR still leaves room for both, whereas denying (A1) does not.

Let me make an argument from authority: Hudson is an authority and therefore not batshit crazy. Therefore, if his argumentation appears to me to be batshit crazy, I have overlooked something. What is it?

Or does Hudson really believe what he believes because he likes it better than the alternatives his logic leaves him?

(Later it turns out Brenda uses the blockquote tag for her own comments. Doesn't change anything about the apparent craziness of the argument.)

What better generic description for God than "a necessarily existing being upon whom the universe depends for its existence"?

Wait, wait, wait. You have overlooked a wide range of possibilities. (And that's not even counting the fact that you chose the singular of "being" without any logical reason.)

1) Solipsism. I am the being upon whom the universe depends for its existence -- because it only exists in my imagination, duh.
2) The universe is a scientific experiment run by ordinary material beings in another universe.
3) The universe is a black hole in another universe.

And that's just off the top of my head!

-----------------

Long, long ago there was a Scientific American article on why SDI won't work. In 2001 there was a Scientific American article on why NMD "WON'T WORK" (all-caps in the original, and in red). I highly recommend them both. Short-bus kitteh say: I can has missl difens?

Posted by: wk | June 9, 2008 6:22 PM

Since it doesn't appear that anyone else has posted it yet, let me refer you all to the "debate" at Whatever (aka, John Scalzi's place):

http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=603

Basically, Scalzi's commenters batted VD around like a cat toy; and however brutally his arguments were shredded, VD's fans remained convinced he was correct.

PZ is right here -- there's no upside to debating these individuals.

Posted by: Sioux Laris | June 9, 2008 6:27 PM

ANOTHER snipe-w/dumbass Brenda thread????

From now on once Brenda posts, I'm simply scrolling past the next 100 posts or signing off. She's headed for a banning on the grounds of being an insufferable bore - quite a distinction since PZed will have to amend his posting rules in order to ban her.
Oh, and why isn't Keith banned? It's everything he wants, outside of being sodomized by 1000 leather-masked and -clad atheists in Yankee Stadium.

What annoying, useless, dull bullshit.

Bye!

Posted by: Bride of Shrek | June 9, 2008 6:32 PM

Brenda demonstrating her voyeurism...

" I watch both camps set up their tents and conduct their wars without ever really engaging each other seriously"

Now there you go, I always suspected you were the type who "likes to watch". I'm still trying to get over your "ejecta" on my computer. You're a dirty girl Brenda. If you're not carfeul you might get a reputation as a slut.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 9, 2008 6:35 PM

I presented the argument because I thought it would be interesting.

Posted by: CalGeorge | June 9, 2008 6:38 PM

"It's immensely sad, you must need each other on some level."

And you seem to need us so that you can sit on your "not my argument" fence and pretend to be above it all.

Jerk.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 9, 2008 6:40 PM

We're saved! Brendas' here. Thank gooodness. All that low hanging fruit was too ripe.

Careful; she might interpret that as sexual harrassment, too.

Posted by: Nibien | June 9, 2008 6:45 PM

Are we sure Brenda isn't Kenny?

Posted by: Patricia | June 9, 2008 6:48 PM

That, Madame is an insult. Never in the history of the Whipmasters & Fornicators Union, Local 666, has a member in good standing been called vulgar. I demand a retraction.

Posted by: Paul W. | June 9, 2008 6:51 PM

The logic is clear and correct as far as it goes. Where it goes wrong is in the assumptions that are made. I would for instance disallow sets that contain themselves (or the axiom of foundation). That should be enough to make this argument to go away. Perhaps I'm wrong about that but I think it would be the beginning of a refutation.

I think you're seriously majoring in the minors and missing the forest for the trees. The problems with this argument are much more basic, and you miss them.

Like most "logical proofs" of the existence of god, the big error is in the interpretation of the terms. There are plenty of valid proofs for "God," and they all fall down in the interpretation of the thing proven as "God."

In this case, there are deep problems with the meanings of "necessity" and "contingency" and "God." Subtleties of set theory don't enter into it. You might be able to patch them up like Koons tries to with mereological aggregates instead of the full (and problematic) machinery of sets, but that would be missing the point entirely.

You're exactly missing the low-hanging fruit, Brenda.

There has never been a good reason to conflate God-ness with a necessary being and certainly not an absolutely necessary being. It's hard to even make sense of the concept of an absolutely necessary being, and it's crystal clear that's never been what gods have been about, at the bottom line. It's even clearer that in light of modern knowledge, the plausibly "necessary" "beings" are not in the least god-like, on any interpretation of "god" from any religion, ever.

Except, of course, a particularly modern concept of god whose essence is meaningless unfalsifiability---the woefully un-god-like "god" who is identical to whatever tiny gap can be shown invulnerable to disproof, no matter how implausible it is to identify that thing as God.

I presented the argument because I thought it would be interesting.

It's going to be pretty dull for the rest of us if you keep missing the very basic and general points we make and focusing on your narrow little hobbyhorses.

You're just not nearly as smart as you think you are, Brenda, or we're not nearly as ignorant as you think we are, and we are not impressed.

The big picture here is that Kant and Hume figured out what was wrong with this sort of argument hundreds of years ago, and debunked it just fine using ordinary language. The introduction of modern formal logic, set theory, etc. is a red herring---it just provides new avenues for obfuscation.

The fact that you don't see that, or at least see the possibility of that, and choose to focus on stuff like Russell's paradox... well, jeez Brenda.

If you want to be a set theory weenie, go ahead. But if you want to talk about something interesting, start by addressing the more basic issues of what's basically wrong with most proofs of God, and most concepts of necessity and whether they apply to this one.

Brenda, you're a narrow little poseur, pretending to have the Big Picture that we miss.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 9, 2008 6:56 PM

Brenda:

"Amazing. You talked for hours and said absolutely nothing."

Posted by: melior | June 9, 2008 7:02 PM

The giveaway is that even if Teddy Beale were to somehow assemble a coherent argument for the existence of god (yeah, right), he's already made it abundantly clear that his (and all his minions) actual reasons for believing have absolutely nothing to do with said hypothetical rational argument.

He's already established what he is, we're just waiting for him to come up with a believable rationalization for it.

He is searching post facto for a convincing cover story for his irrational belief.

Defense rests.

Posted by: windy | June 9, 2008 7:10 PM

Neither appears capable of noticing the leaps in the logic in the conclusion -- but Brenda is capable of summarizing a philosophical argument, while Kenny's eyes would have glazed over after the first two lines.

Actually, she has more in common with J. Remember, he was also going on about these supposedly sophisticated arguments for God - he doesn't believe them, mind you, but they are not so easy to demolish and blah blah blah. And insulting everyone in their first post in each thread, then spending the rest of the time whining what big meanies we are. Basically articulate but incapable of convincing anyone of their supposedly superior knowledge and intellect.

Posted by: MartinM | June 9, 2008 7:15 PM

Geeeze, Brenda, don't you now realize that the people here do not wish any serious discussion?

Right, that would be why several of us discussed the argument presented. You, on the other hand, chose to ignore that in favour of a cheap, snide one-liner. Somebody seems to have trouble with serious discussion, but it isn't us, I'm afraid.

Posted by: Salt | June 9, 2008 7:18 PM

(and all his [Vox Day] minions)

We're ilk, not minion. Get it right.

Posted by: Zarquon | June 9, 2008 7:20 PM

Don't be silly Martin. Superior minds like Salt don't need to look at evidence before pronouncing judgement.

Shorter version: Salt you ignorant slut

Posted by: Patricia | June 9, 2008 7:22 PM

Grap..is that Jungian?..

Posted by: Barklikeadog | June 9, 2008 7:27 PM

His football punditry is as shitty as everything else on his blog.

"Still haven't seen anyone I expect to beat Italy."

Check the morning's results dumbass!

Holland 3 Italy 0

Posted by: Andrew Brown | June 9, 2008 7:20 PM

Holland and Italy play soccer Andrew. Footbal is reserved for the big dumb guys that date Brenda.

Posted by: Patricia | June 9, 2008 7:33 PM

Lob those kiwis on over Lurker, it's cold enough here today that they'll do just fine!

Posted by: Andrew Brown | June 9, 2008 7:41 PM

Barklikeadog

No I'm sorry you're wrong there

American Football is for Brenda's steroidal boyfriends, who don't have the brains to play a proper sport.

Football aka the beautiful game is what Vox Day wouldn't understand if Alan Hansen gave him a month's one to one coaching.

America and England, 2 nations divided by a common language! :-)

Posted by: nanoAl | June 9, 2008 7:53 PM

I say do the debate, but bring an air horn and blast him every time he lies (and of course welcome him to do the same). That just might stop a Gish Gallop in its tracks. And so long as you only used it immediately after a lie (rather than blocking out his entire segment as would otherwise be appropriate) it just might help to expose how dishonest the arguments for a god are.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 9, 2008 8:12 PM

a long, elegant mathematical proof that bumblebees cannot fly.

<wince>

That was a nice aerodynamical demonstration that bumblebees do not fly the same way as airplanes.

Actually, she has more in common with J.

Good point.

I say do the debate, but bring an air horn and blast him every time he lies (and of course welcome him to do the same). That just might stop a Gish Gallop in its tracks.

Good idea.

Posted by: Mena | June 9, 2008 8:20 PM

Andrew Brown @#182:
One of the best (it was kiddingly of course) ways that I have see the language difference explained is that in the US we speak American and in the UK you speak Old American.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 9, 2008 8:26 PM

right on , Windy.

It's just the old game of confrontation and vanity. It's very tempting I must say...

I personally don't mind the Brendas, the Js, the Kennys, the Waltons, as I think PZ does a pretty good job of keeping the influx/dungeon at the right level. We need those, otherwise Pharyngula wouldn't be the same, and as long as there is a clear majority of insightful commenters, what do we care ?

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 9, 2008 8:36 PM

Barklikeadog, Andrew Brown,

Sorry, you're both wrong. American football is like rugby for pansies, constantly interrupted by commercial breaks. "Association football" (aka "soccer") is, famously, "a gentleman's game played by hooligans", and "football" is one of the two national sports of Ireland, the other being hurling. Hurling is the game once described to American audiences as "somewhere between ice-hockey and murder".

:o)

Posted by: SC | June 9, 2008 8:45 PM

I presented the argument because I thought it would be interesting.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and believe that you meant this sincerely. My advice to you, if you have a genuine desire to contribute to this blog, is to drop the agonistic (and antagonistic) approach. Try to engage in a discussion with the people who are responding thoughtfully to your posts. For you to ignore the responses of Nick Gotts and Paul W. and then go on to make the ludicrous claim that "Vox Day's comment section is no different in tone than this one" suggests that your goal is something other than joining in a reasoned exchange of views with the people here, but I'm still holding out a bit of hope. Time will tell, I suppose.

Posted by: Barklikeadog | June 9, 2008 8:51 PM

Barklikeadog

No I'm sorry you're wrong there

American Football is for Brenda's steroidal boyfriends, who don't have the brains to play a proper sport.

Football aka the beautiful game is what Vox Day wouldn't understand if Alan Hansen gave him a month's one to one coaching.

America and England, 2 nations divided by a common language! :-)

Posted by: Andrew Brown | June 9, 2008 7:41 PM

You're right Andrew, It was the point I was attempting. really don't care what you call the sport. Having played both, I have to say I prefer American Football however. I didn't keep up with the steroids to take it into college. There are plenty of smart linebackers too but my ex-son-in-law deserves the lable of 'moron' being a lineman & a wife beater(probably caused by the steroids).

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | June 9, 2008 9:10 PM

The simplest evidence that a supreme all-powerful being could present to prove his existence is to just flashy-thing us all into knowing he exists. It'd both do the job and end the problem in one stroke. I'd be utterly convinced - utterly - that there was a "god" if everyone in the world suddenly were in absolute agreement about what that god was and its properties. So far, without divine intervention, mankind has been unable to agree about even the broadest properties of "god" - good evidence that god is man-made not the other way around.

Or an old testament-style proof - gigantic 10,000 mile high golden arches appearing suddenly over Jerusalem, with singing angels and fire swords and elvis singing "baby that's my god" over a mysterious pan-planetary supernatural amplifier.

But my favorite way god could prove his presence is to rapture all the fucking christian idiots off the planet, already. They're waiting for it, and - frankly - so am I.

Posted by: Rey Fox | June 9, 2008 9:12 PM

"American football is like rugby for pansies"

Tell that to any quarterback who's had his ankle rolled over by a 300-pound lineman.

Posted by: Sastra | June 9, 2008 9:16 PM

Just curious: what kind of evidence would constitute proof of a god or set theism on a firm footing? I remember someone (maybe here?) remarking that a distinct cosmic message via star alignment or something like that would qualify. What else? I'm stumped.

Calladus wrote:

As an Atheist, I think it is a fool's errand to stipulate what it would require for me to believe in God.

I disagree; if we can't even imagine the sort of evidence which would persuade us that God or the supernatural exists, then our atheism and naturalist metaphysics is unfalsifiable. If atheism is a tentative conclusion, and not a faith, then we have to be able to recognize if and when we are mistaken, and know it.

I'll leave aside the various forms of God, and just go to the more basic question of the supernatural: what kind of evidence would put supernaturalism on a firm footing?

Brief answer: strong scientific evidence for the paranormal, specifically those forms with mind/brain substance dualism. If minds have direct causal power and can exist without physical bodies, then we've got a precondition for the existence of a Disembodied Mind which creates and moves matter through the force of its intentions.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 9, 2008 9:30 PM

my favorite lesbian songstress, Kerry born but living in the Bronx, once related to me how she laid some poor girl's head open during a camogie game.

Tell that to any quarterback who's had his ankle rolled over by a 300-pound lineman.

Posted by: Fernando Magyar | June 9, 2008 9:34 PM

Re #183
Maybe the Brits can't spell it but the Austrians can't pronounce it.
http://banderasnews.com/0611/nw-fucking-austria.htm

Posted by: Veltyen | June 9, 2008 9:55 PM

Initials cause laughter.

I was wondering why anyone would change to the initials "VD".

Then I realised. It is a step up from "TB"

Posted by: Patricia | June 9, 2008 10:14 PM

My favorite gay artist had it right all along - Exodus 33:20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall be no man see me and live. 33:21 And the Lord said, Behold there is a place by me, and thou shall stand upon a rock: 33:22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in the clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: 33:23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
Thank Eris I am a woman & will be unable to see the giant ass in the sky!

Posted by: Matt | June 9, 2008 10:34 PM

@ Steve Zara, #187:

Exactly. While reading reading this thread I was just thinking that if something seemingly miraculous occurred in my presence (a truck levitating, somebody coming back to life, etc.) I would suspect either an amazingly complex trick/hoax (in the first situation) or mad-scientist/aliens (in the 2nd) before I would consider a supernatural cause. Because hoaxes, mad scientists and aliens are way more reasonable than deities.

RE: comments on "Brenda Threads":
After having gone through a few, and with all due respect to those attempting to have a cordial discussion, why is anyone still expecting some sort of coherent response from Brenda? I ask because I suspect Brenda is in fact some sort of complicated Turing test. Questions like "where's the actual, physical evidence" get a rambling cut & paste of PSR/PNR/whatever that barely connects to the original question. Attempts to connect with Brenda get snide personal attacks as a response. I guess my point is that reading Brenda's comments have not convinced me there is an actual human being behind them, but have me wondering if in fact it's a computer major's AI thesis project.

Like those grad students who made that academic paper program which spat out gibberish but still got papers accepted to conferences. If that's not too mean to say.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 9, 2008 10:50 PM

Barklikeadog,

Lemaître, not Lametra. (I'm a bit picky, my mother's name, he was my grand uncle...).
Of course, being a Jesuit, he said that he was pleased that this discovery meant that there was no conflict between his faith and science. It's also true that most scientists at first rejected the idea, even Einstein, and Eddington called it repungnant, but quite rapidly they were all convinced his mathematical model was the right one.

I wonder what he would say now that science is hypothising that the big bang was just an event in a previous to be defined state, and not, the begining...

Posted by: Sastra | June 9, 2008 10:54 PM

windy #203 wrote:

True, but the problem lies with the concept of "supernatural" as well. If there exists "something beyond this world" and it interacts with our world with any sort of regularity, why isn't it just another "natural" thing?

It comes down to how we define the "supernatural," and separate it from what is "natural." As you point out, if the critical demarkation points are being "outside of nature" or "incapable of being known through science," then the lines can always be moved as we learn more. Trouble is, I think those are bad definitive criteria, because we can then end up with a cosmos infused with repeatable and testable magic, spirits, ghosts, and God -- and hey, it's all "natural." The term's definition isn't tracking along with how we actually apply it, and becomes vacuous.

I prefer to make the substantive difference hinge on skyhooks vs. cranes -- the "supernatural" would involve non-physical Pure Mind, mental properties, or meaning as a causal power not reducible or derived from the material, but able to act on it without any physical process. That ends up excluding weird effects and areas in quantum and string theory which are different than the natural universe we experience, but ends up including disembodied souls, ghosts, ESP, psychokenesis, magical correspondances, vitalism, karma, prana, God, cosmic consciousness, mind as "energy force," a universal tendency towards the harmonic balance of Good and Evil, progressive evolution towards Higher States, mind/body substance dualism, and holistic nonmaterialistic monism. I'd consider all of those "supernatural," whether we could study them or not.

Steve Zara #205 wrote:

"through the force of its intentions" makes no sense. If there is substance dualism, then the mind is also physical, and has to interact with the rest of the world in a physical manner, in which case it is falls within the bounds of naturalism.

Not necessarily. In "substance dualism," there are supposed to be non-physical existents and "powers" and "forces" and they are above ordinary nature -- or below it -- or on some other level or dimension or whatever. It's hard to pin down because there's not really anything that fits into it.

Keep in mind that people who believe in those things will be pleased as punch to call them "natural" if they think that will get them accepted and normalized. But they're not going to allow them to be reduced to mindless physical mechanisms.

As Dembski put it: "Is reality fundamentally mindful and purposive or mindless and material?" If they plump for the first, I call Supernaturalism on them -- whether they do so themselves or not. Frankly, pretty much everyone mucks around with the terms -- and sometimes it's for rhetorical effect or to gain unearned credit.

As you can probably tell, I am a methodological naturalist!

And, as you can probably tell, I think 'methodological naturalism' is a dodge -- the term was invented to protect religion and the supernatural from the kind of shredding they get when science is sicced on 'em. There's nothing in the scientific methods and explanatory criteria which invoke any natural/supernatural distinctions, or specify in advance what can or can't be studied. Theists only pretend God is "outside of science" when the evidence they want just isn't there.

Posted by: qbsmd | June 9, 2008 11:13 PM

Brenda, re #104,
4 is not correct. P can easily be constructed such that S is a contradiction. Therefore S is neither necessarily or contingently true.
A2 can't be technically correct, because if two contingently true statements in the form "p is possible" and "not p is possible" are conjoined, then the conjunction is not contingently true. Some limits on the application of A2 therefore apply.
/not a philosopher, my knowledge is limited to basic symbolic logic. If this is wrong, someone please correct me.

I've always taken "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" in the following way: If I am exposed to evidence for something such that the likeliehood of my having hallucinated the evidence is greater than that something, then the evidence is insufficient. Similarly, if the evidence seen by many poeple has a higher probability of being a mass halucination then the probability of whatever it is supporting, then that evidence is insufficient. Therefore, for very unlikely things, very indisputable evidence is required.

Posted by: melior | June 9, 2008 11:42 PM

I don't believe the concept has any useful meaning.

That may be a little hasty:

God is a concept
by which we measure
our pain.
- John Lennon

Posted by: 12th Monkey | June 10, 2008 12:23 AM

Pure Mind acting on the physical universe must it would seem, itself be acted upon by that universe in some way at least if we presume that this PM is to have some kind of knowledge of what's going on in that universe. So we have A acting on B and B acting back on A. Throw in that these interactions are reproducible and I think you've just found another weird aspect of physics. I suppose if you adopt some kind of "reality as a mere dream of God" approach so that the PM can only act but not be acted upon then you are close to something truly supernatural. This would seem to preclude our doing reproducible experiments on it though.

Posted by: MPhil | June 10, 2008 12:32 AM

On a different topic - The notion of the "supernatural" as causally active in the physical world is not a coherent concept. In fact, we cannot conceive of what causation would be, how it should in fact obtain, outside of a spacetime framework.

That, of course, disposes of theism, dualism and the "supernatural" all in one go.

The philosopher Jaegwon Kim has explicated this wonderfully in "Physicalism, or something near enough": If it isn't intertheoretically reducible (reductive physicalism), it cannot be causally active. And of course, epiphenomalism about the mind - or about god (the idea cracks me up) is untenable.

Posted by: Kel | June 10, 2008 12:49 AM

You know a belief is in a poor state when first cause and design are the "sophisticated" arguments.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 10, 2008 12:50 AM

Mike,

Brenda hasn't exactly endeared herself in a couple of postings. The harshness you perceive is most likely a reaction to that rather than the specific content of this particular post. Sure, it'd be ideal if we considered the merits of an argument in total isolation from their source, and never carried personal baggage that coloured our responses, but I certainly don't manage it myself and I don't think it's an entirely reasonable expectation.

Posted by: mandrake | June 10, 2008 12:55 AM

MPhil -
I'm confused here. Why is epiphenominalism about the mind untenable? I may be misunderstanding the use of the word.

Posted by: Arnosium Upinarum | June 10, 2008 1:06 AM

Emmet #70: You hit it directly on the head. It's about vanity, advocacy, rhetoric, and presentational acumen. Though some may come to the challenge seriously and sincerely (as you describe you have), the end-effect is an exhibitionist exercise in style, a futile and pointless game that has almost nothing to do with anything as lofty as zeroing in on truth and everything to do with "winning". Loading the peanut gallery with disciples assures a "win", even if one's viewpoint has been technically smashed to bits. Almost nobody gets persuaded out of the viewpoints they already hold.

As a means of determining the superior of two opposing viewpoints on any issue strictly on the basis of logic and reasoned argument, debate might as well be something one puts on a fish hook.

Posted by: MPhil | June 10, 2008 1:17 AM

Emmet
Brenda hasn't exactly endeared herself in a couple of postings. The harshness you perceive is most likely a reaction to that rather than the specific content of this particular post. Sure, it'd be ideal if we considered the merits of an argument in total isolation from their source, and never carried personal baggage that coloured our responses, but I certainly don't manage it myself and I don't think it's an entirely reasonable expectation.

It isn't - you're right... but I think we might try to do our best nevertheless. We are promoting reason, after all. Anyway - I don't object to criticizing tone and behaviour. But I feel we should attempt to maintain a certain level of civility.

The type of comments I felt inappropriate for people promoting reason are examplified by Bride of Shrek's response to me....

Bride of Shrek
I wasn't aware that there was a set standard of sophistry that we had to have in order for our opinions to mean anything to obviously far more educated persons such as yourself.
I never said that - in fact I stated that would be unreasonable to demand that arguements brought forth on a comment-section are on the highest level of detail of academic discourse. And never have I stated that opionions are meaningless unless based on arguments of highest-possible-level of detail and sophistication.

Really, you make it seem as if you just want to be insulting and rude... and go over the corpses of hundreds of straw-men in the course of that.

I humbly submit that myself, and most Pharyngulites, return to our obviously sophistry-lacking lives and excuse ourselves for being annoyances to your intellectually elite sphere.

See what I mean? My goodness, if people were arguing over psychology and a psychologist came along stating that it's the topics and arguments are more nuanced than what is debated on a comment-section of a blog... would you also make that comment?

Feel free to insult me further if it pleases you. I will stick to engaging in actual conversation and disregard further infantile behaviour.

Mandrake,
I'm confused here. Why is epiphenominalism about the mind untenable? I may be misunderstanding the use of the word.

Epiphenomenalism is a kind of property dualism, so for a physicalist it is untenable. Epiphenomenalism about the mental in general would mean that beliefs, evaluations, thougts etc would have no causal role in the world at all. That would also mean that your thoughts about what I wrote did in no way influence the movements of your finger in typing your response to me. I think this is untenable. Reductive physicalism seems to explain the phenomena far more readily: Yes, beliefs, thoughts, evaluations, deductions, inferences etc play a causal role - because they reduce to activity in the neural network.

It's a different matter with qualia. Kim believes they are epiphenomenal - that we have to live with a residue of property dualism. But I don't think this is correct - because this position again would not allow for my qualia to influence in any way my talking (or typing statements) about qualia - and because people like Paul and Patricia Churchland have made significant advances in intetheoretic reduction of qualia (see Paul Churchlands "Chimerical Colors" for example - very interesting paper).

-Mike

Posted by: Kel | June 10, 2008 1:25 AM

@#233
I can understand that, but if that is there position then they shouldn't:
* try and formalise arguments to back their belief
or
* complain when those arguments are ripped apart

If they want to believe it to be true, that's their business. But when they want to play in anything other than Fantasyland then those arguments won't cut it, simple.

Posted by: mandrake | June 10, 2008 1:34 AM

epiphenomenon |ˌepəfəˈnäməˌnän; -ˈnämənən|
noun ( pl. -nomena |-ˈnämənə|)
a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process, in particular
• Medicine a secondary symptom, occurring simultaneously with a disease or condition but not directly related to it.
• a mental state regarded as a byproduct of brain activity.

Sorry, out of my depth here, as it appears the word "epiphenomenon" is being used differently than I am used to .
I would assume that def. above means that a mental state is a byproduct of brain activity, and the mental state itself has not influenced the brain activity that led to it - but I don't see that it says that the state *cannot* influence further brain activity.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 10, 2008 1:39 AM

Dear Sir/Madame,

Brenda is not Kenny. They are very dissimilar. I'm pretty sure that one of them is a guy.

Sincerely Yours,

A Careful Reader

Posted by: Ken Cope | June 10, 2008 1:39 AM

Just thought I'd plop a load of Vedanta into the punch bowl; no particular reason, I just like the studied shrug of the shoulders, a recognition of how far religious and philosophical wankery will take you.

1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

Posted by: MPhil | June 10, 2008 2:01 AM

Bride of Shrek,
Furthermore I call you out on your denial of the implication that we aren't as sophisticated as you would like us to be with your own comment...

"that many (but by far not all) of the usual arguments presented here and elsewhere against theism or dualism or whatever are not on the highest level of sophisitication such arguments can be "

Have you considered the analogy with psychology?

The arguements are - in the end, of philosophical nature. The argument from design, the rebuttals therof, the first-cause arguments and such. My claim was that the arguments as they are discussed by the the people who have studied logic, philosophy and/or philosophy of science (theistic and atheistic) are more numerous, more nuanced and, yes, more sophisticated than as they are forwarded by people who are not experts on the subject.

I am sure you can see how this cannot be condescending or arrogant if it is true. But one cannot know if this is true if one has not seriously engaged with the arguments as the experts I mention debate them - and those they discuss in addition to those that are discussed on (most) comments-sections.

I hope you can also see how it is arrogant to take offence at what I said without having a knowledge of what I said was more nuanced and sophisticated.

I happen to be in exactly that field of study - so I feel your reaction to my comment is just as unwarranted as it would be to call a physicist condescending and insulting if he told people who are not in that field of study discussing his field of study that the actual situation is more complicated, that the actual arguments among the experts are more sophisticated and nuanced...

I hope I have been able to at least explicate why your reaction to me can indeed be seen as arrogant itself.

You will also notice that I did not generalize - I specifically stated that not all arguments as they are being put forward here have been reevaluated, met with serious critique, and that critique in turn (etc)...

Let me give an example... the Kalam argument. The rebuttals being forwarded on the comments-sections to blogs I frequent are all good and well... but there is more nuanced and sophisticated discussion going on, involving questions of nominalism versus platonism, of transfinite mathematics, whether contingency is an additive property etc.

The discussion between the dreadful but knowledgable Craig and the wonderful Oppy migh serve as an example

So, I have to say that I think it is you who has been arrogant - and that my position is justified.

Anyway - I do appreciate the more reasonable tone of your last comment.

Mandrake,

well... in philosophy of mind the term has sort of but not exactly the same meaning. In that context, it does mean that the mind, and everything mental plays no causal role in the world whatsoever.. and that it isn't merely the function of the brain, but something above and beyond that, although causally impotent.

If you're interested in philosophical topics, the Stanford Encyclopedia always helps :)

Here you go:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/

-Mike

Posted by: Kel | June 10, 2008 2:15 AM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Dawkins shoot down that argument in The God Delusion?

Posted by: Bride of Shrek | June 10, 2008 2:21 AM

I have no wish to get into a slanging match over who is right or who is wrong. I would freely admit I obviously am not in any way in the philosophy field. However I'm still unsure as to what your reasoning is to the way you feel you can make statement, leave people feeling insulted and still manage to turn it around to say it's their fault.

And no, I haven't "considered the analogy to psychology". I dumped my B.Psych in the second year to change to a degree where I could get a real job. Believe it or not here in the real world there's kids to feed, houses to clean, jobs to go to and study to be done. I have little time to sit around on my butt thinking of analogies to situations.

Now, completely off topic but I am curious. Your blog ( which I think is excellent BTW) says you're in Germany- I'm dying to know- are you arguing here in a language other than your native language? Cause if you are my admiration just skyrocketed ( and believe it or not there is admiration there- just because I disagree with you on one area doesn't mean I don't find your other reasonings very valid and worthy. Actually I'm trying very hard to make sense of your discussion with Mandrake and Kel)

Posted by: AJW308 | June 10, 2008 2:24 AM

I smell an intellectual coward here.

Posted by: MPhil | June 10, 2008 2:32 AM

Bride of Shrek,

leave people feeling insulted and still manage to turn it around to say it's their fault.

I think I qualified my statements enough - and (so far), no one else has stated they felt offended by my comments.

Believe it or not here in the real world there's kids to feed, houses to clean, jobs to go to and study to be done. I have little time to sit around on my butt thinking of analogies to situations.

I certainly do believe it - I have to live in that world, too, you know? Definitely not easy. But you can see how, in the case you laid out, jumping to conclusions might be unwarranted.

Your blog ( which I think is excellent BTW) says you're in Germany- I'm dying to know- are you arguing here in a language other than your native language

Thank you for that compliment.
Well, yes - German is my native language. But in my third year of learning English, I started watching TV-shows - and haven't stopped since. I've had Enlish in school for 11 years, the academic literature is mostly in English... so I've had enough time to practice :)

That also means that I don't think the fact that I'm not a native-speaker is an excuse for my committing any grammatical or orthographical errors... I do want those pointed out (yes, I'm a pedant - as you will already have noticed :)

Posted by: Kel | June 10, 2008 2:34 AM

Thanks for that.

So many things wrong with the argument, no idea where to begin :P

Posted by: mandrake | June 10, 2008 2:39 AM

MPhil -
It's going to take me a while to get through that entry, but from just a brief look, I agree that "epiphenomenalism" would be a difficult concept for which to argue in favor. I'm usually in the English field ("what's the latin root of that?") or in psych field, which is more interested in "say we increase the level of *this* chemical in the brain..." and the term gets used much more simply. Thus my confusion. The explanation is appreciated.
That said... to be honest, you really *are* coming across as somewhat arrogant. I'm afraid I can't really explain why, though I suspect it has something to do with the sort of "academic distance" or didacticism that one gets used to assuming in a presentation situation or publication format. Comment threads tend to be a more casual and volatile medium, and people see it differently. That's as close as I can get.
So I don't think either you or Bride of Shrek were being arrogant. That may get you both on my back (grin) but I hope not.

Posted by: MPhil | June 10, 2008 2:56 AM

Thanks for that.

My pleasure!

So many things wrong with the argument, no idea where to begin Indeed - but interestingly, it's logically conclusive.

("Reformed Epistemology" is - in my opinion - far more difficult to approach)

Anyway, concerning Plantinga's modal-ontological argument,
we can start by questioning axiom S5 of modal logic (POSSIBLY NECESSARY P -> NECESSARY P) - since not all modal-logical frameworks make use of that axiom.

Then we might point out that ontological arguments rely on using existence as a logical predicate, whereas it is only a grammatical predicate, but logically it is a quantifier and can therefore not be a property of an entity, since statment about something already quantify over it.

Or we might say that they only show that it is possible to have a concept of something which if it had a real referent, it would have a necessarily existing referent. (Like the concept of a "real martian" - which does include the existence of the martian, obviously).

Or we might, as Mackie does, take the route to say that in the standard semantic interpretation of modal logic (the so-called "possible-world semantic"), we would have "nested" networks of possible worlds, in either all, none or some of which a proposition would be true, but that the conclusions that something is "true in all possible worlds" is only true in "all possible worlds" that are "nested in"(or "branch off" of) the world where the propositions denote (which is related to the line of argument above this one).

I think the links I posted and the arguments I laid out here demonstrate what I was talking about, and let me re-iterate that this does not mean that the arguments not being discussed on such a level does not invalidate the discourse or render the participants in the discourse themselves in any way less sophisticated qua persons or debaters... it's just that this is a field of study where extremely technical and complicated discourse is going on, and that -as with every other academic discipline- the level of discourse is somewhat more nuanced and sophisticated than the level of discourse among laymen who have no expertise in the field of studies.

The problem is that this is a topic where everyone has an opinion, and has own arguments... which isn't the case when it comes to, let's say - automaton theory or artificial neural network research, or mathematics etc...

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 10, 2008 3:02 AM

I knew that people might find my position condescending

I think you're kinda missing the point: you issued a broad missive reproaching people in defence of Brenda. In doing so, you aligned yourself with her arrogance, condescension, and belittlement of other people. If you'd said exactly the same thing without the rebuke, I very much doubt you would have had any negative reaction at all.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 10, 2008 3:14 AM

Well, yes - German is my native language.

In any case, your English is impressive. I've read your posts on three different blogs and just assumed you were a native English-speaker. It doesn't get much better than that.

Posted by: MPhil | June 10, 2008 3:21 AM

Emmet,

as far as I can tell, German is way more direct than English - but I cannot say how it compares to Swedish. But I know that certain behaviour (linguistic) that would be perfectly ordinary in German would be considered rude in the US.

Anyway - the thoughts I am explicating here I have explicated on RDnet as well, but perhaps there I have introduced the "possibly controversial" material only after people knew me already. In any case - over there, nobody seemed to think that my position was one of arrogance.

In any case, your English is impressive. I've read your posts on three different blogs and just assumed you were a native English-speaker. It doesn't get much better than that.

Thank you.

So, do you frequent RDnet and Steve Zara's blog or did you take the time to research what I wrote based on what I wrote here? I hope it's the former, otherwise I'm definitely getting way too much attention :)

Posted by: brokenSoldier, OM | June 10, 2008 3:38 AM

MPhil:

...it's just that this is a field of study where extremely technical and complicated discourse is going on, and that -as with every other academic discipline- the level of discourse is somewhat more nuanced and sophisticated than the level of discourse among laymen who have no expertise in the field of studies.

There are plenty of individuals all around the world who find it quite easy to discuss the matters you're addressing in a way that makes it comparatively simple for both insiders and outsiders to understand the content and ideas behind the discourse. The only reason you think it is so difficult is because you desire it to seem so to anyone who tries to read your posts. You've deliberately obfuscate the points in your posts solely because you will not put the thesaurus (or the prepositions) down. In short, your posts on this thread have an air of elitism, which causes people to lose interest in discussing anything at all with you. Which you, in turn, mistakenly take as some sort of victory.

I knew that people might find my position condescending - but I feel that is unwarranted and itself arrogant...

If you cannot recognize that presenting language so obviously convoluted is extremely arrogant, especially when it would be much easier to state your position in terms you know that your intended audience would be able to parse more effectively, then you're either oblivious or extremely arrogant. And since you suggest that it is arrogant of anyone to expect clear, concise speech on a form of media that makes it particularly tedious to sift through long and tangled entries, I tend to lean toward the conclusion that you are quite arrogant yourself.

I also enjoy your blog from time to time, but only when it does not contain the seemingly arrogant flaunting of artificially expanded wording that you've shown on this thread. For example, this recent post of yours is both clear and concise, and makes a couple of really good points.

The existence of "free will" in humans is - it seems - a default assumption. But when we try to conceptualize what we mean by that, we run into trouble. Free will is of value to us - we conceive of ourselves as agents, not as puppets simply being pulled in one direction or the other. We are rational agents, we make choices, we strive to do the right thing. Surely, for all this to mean something - we have to have free will. Or at least, these are the kinds of gut-feelings most people have.

See? Clear, concise, and making good points. And it did all that without a hint of the linguistic snobbery displayed in your recent posts. You're obviously quite an intelligent person, but you have shown a major flaw. You fail to realize that readers - instead of admiring your intelligence - will invariably begin to tune you out. I'm not saying that your pposts do not make sense - I'm simply saying that they're over-inflated, and can make just as much sense - and contribute far more to the discussion - if they are stated with more of an emphasis on clarity and conciseness.

Posted by: J | June 10, 2008 4:02 AM

Different circumstances, I think, little or nothing to do with content.
I see, Emmet, that you're once again trying to apologize for the doings of Mob. You do have a valid point, as ever, but I really think it's a little dishonest to say that explosive reactions to slightly condescending posts are justified. Especially when said explosive reactions purport to address content as opposed to tone (and, for example, refer to non-existent refutations of sound arguments).

I think a major problem on this blog is that there is a number of regular posters who are constantly on the lookout to wildly assail those who disagree with consensus opinion. And once the hunt is underway, the only socially acceptable thing for the other regulars to do is back their buddies.

Posted by: J | June 10, 2008 4:09 AM

Bah! Another major problem with this blog is that there are no Edit capabilities.

Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 10, 2008 4:59 AM

Having been exposed to the avalanche of condescension and tidal waves of whining Brenda let loose on us earlier, I understand the general reaction, but I thought that when she managed a whole comment (#104) without either, a bit of positive reinforcement was in order - unless the aim is to drive her away, which would of course be perfectly reasonable given her record. Anyhow, like MPhil, I do find these arguments of some interest, in the "where exactly does it go wrong?" sense, and since they are waved around by some of the more sophisticated theists, there is a need for at least some atheists to have the technical knowledge to refute them (this doesn't include me, b.t.w., though I have some logic and epistemology background).

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 10, 2008 5:14 AM

I see, Emmet, that you're once again trying to apologize for the doings of Mob.

I really think it's a little dishonest to say that explosive reactions to slightly condescending posts are justified.

Especially when said explosive reactions purport to address content as opposed to tone (and, for example, refer to non-existent refutations of sound arguments).

I think a major problem on this blog is that there is a number of regular posters who are constantly on the lookout to wildly assail those who disagree with consensus opinion.

And once the hunt is underway, the only socially acceptable thing for the other regulars to do is back their buddies.

A few people think I'm measured in tone, others think I'm am obsequious "cred-seeker" who wants to play peacemaker, others think I'm an insightful commentator, others think I'm a bullshitter who hasn't got the balls to say what he really thinks, others think I'm a condescending know-all who likes to armchair psychoanalyse people, others think I'm a dick playing mind-games, and others haven't decided or maybe something else. Which are true? Only one? All of 'em? To what extent do I know, care, or exercise control? Does it matter?

Why did you post comment #268? What did you hope to achieve? How could I have interpreted it? How did I interpret it? Is my response what you expected? Wanted?

Posted by: J | June 10, 2008 6:13 AM

For example? In any case, very few people actually dissect every post and clearly distinguish between tone and content.
If in "those two threads" people had merely said such things as "Oh, piss off, J, you condescending prick", your vindication of their behaviour would perhaps be merited. But of course they didn't stop at that. They got extremely irate about the actual substance of my posts, pretending that a knockdown argument against me was readily available (as if I'd committed a logical howler in suggesting that "Bright" might be strategically better than "atheist"). In fact, I'd guess that most posts aimed at me responded directly to content.

Why did you post comment #268? What did you hope to achieve? How could I have interpreted it? How did I interpret it? Is my response what you expected? Wanted?
Yes, that post was probably unwise. Why do you think it was unwise, Emmet? You know as well as I do, don't you, that there are regulars here who are bound to react hysterically straight off the bat. Give them any excuse to start a witch-hunt, and they will seize upon it.

But I have no intention of causing another ruction, and if they prove me right by slinging mud I'll simply ignore them. Please don't be sore about the "cred-seeker" remark, by the way. I was more angry than sincere when I wrote that.

Posted by: Zarquon | June 10, 2008 7:23 AM

1) "Vitalism lost its force". Where are the science papers that claim to have put an end to vitalism?

Friedrich Wöhler (1828). "Ueber künstliche Bildung des Harnstoffs". Annalen der Physik und Chemie 37 (1): 330.

Yes that's 1828 do try to keep up.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 10, 2008 8:00 AM

Vitalism ?

The central problem is that vitalism offers no definite predictions.
The key issue is not that it posits an unkwowable factor in explaining life, but that this one is inaccessible to empirical test and thus devoid of empirical meaning, and moreover, it's been supplemented by empirically more adequate mechanistic accounts.
In brief, rather useless even if not even wrong...

Posted by: SC | June 10, 2008 9:42 AM

MPhil:

Honestly, I must say that at least some of the comments in response to Brenda were condescending and underservedly harsh.

I don't mind confrontation at all - but I could make out no sufficient reason for some of the comments.

Did it occur to you to investigate? So as not to be accused of quotemining, I'll simply point you to the recent "Judge Myers Presiding" thread.

It seems to me that if you are interested in raising the level of sophistication in the comments, you simply need to post sophisticated comments yourself. If people offer substantive responses at a reasonable level of sophistication, then you will have succeeded. If not, then you will be justified in considering the discussion to be stuck at a lower level than you prefer. The trick, though, is to make the substantive comments without combining them with an uninformed analysis of the thread or a scolding of other commenters founded on baseless opinions. Given your initial post, I was surprised to see your later comment to BOS: "But you can see how, in the case you laid out, jumping to conclusions might be unwarranted."

You also continued another Brendism in that you entered the thread to have your say while apparently ignoring those commenters who had responded to the substance of Brenda's post. I appreciate that you did respond to those people who answered you specifically, but why were Paul W.'s and Nick Gotts's comments not worthy of being answered or taken into account in your comments? It does give the impression that you're approaching the question from an "I am an expert, and I will now pronounce on the matter" perspective.

Oddly, you raise other examples of "sophisticated" arguments, only to then dismiss them yourself, while implying that nonexperts wouldn't understand why they're wrong. If they're relevant to the discussion, you could at least try to explain what they are and how, specifically, others have countered them. I like that you offered references and links (and I've been known to post simply a link with little or no commentary, so I probably shouldn't talk), but this doesn't really make for a great conversation.

In some of your later posts, you do attempt this, but I agree with brokenSoldier that, if your aim is to have a discussion or even to educate and not simply to impress, some of your language is too technical. There is an important question about what is lost in translating high-level abstract or scientific matters into more everyday terms, but people should always try. I found I was able to follow this, for example:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nwl0Os4moWg

(though I don't know how much was lost in the simplification process). You say at one point: "Yes, I'm not a Daniel Dennett whose language is easily accessible - but guess how often he is accused (not by me, though) of oversimplification." If you think he uses accessible language and does not oversimplify, then you appear to be agreeing that it is possible, so I don't really see your point.

Finally, you do seem rather unduly enamored of sophistication. PZ was asking for good arguments - not sophisticated ones. You say:

Actually, I didn't mean so much that there are better arguments - but that the "usual" counter-arguments have been recognized by theistic philosophers and been countered again, which again have been countered by atheists/agnostics and so forth... with increasing complexity.

There does seem to be a fair bit of "wanking" involved here. You yourself call Plantinga's argument "preposterous." If it is indeed preposterous, then I'm not at all surprised that "isn't easy to make a sufficiently strong argument for why it isn't a warranted/justified position." In this case, "sophistication" would appear to be a means of obscurantism.

All of that said, I think you made some very worthwhile points.

Posted by: StuV | June 10, 2008 10:51 AM

Ah... what a fantastic reminder how annoying and ultimately useless philosophy is.

Thanks people. Good job.

Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 10, 2008 11:01 AM

Re #284 -
Ah... what a fantastic reminder how proud some people are of their ignorance.
Thanks StuV. Good Job.

Posted by: SC | June 10, 2008 11:12 AM

Iain Walker,

I understood that perfectly. That must mean it can't be very sophisticated :).

Posted by: StuV | June 10, 2008 11:34 AM

Obviously, I'm not making my point very well. Let me quote WikiPedia. I have no problem with:

Philosophy of science is the study of assumptions, foundations, and implications of science.

I have a problem with

Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to draw philosophical morals.

Anyway, I'm claiming ESL and lack of coffee... the latter of which I am now off to rectify.

Posted by: StuV | June 10, 2008 11:43 AM

Okay, I just took a crash course at Google University and it turns out that my definition of "philosophy" was much narrower than that of reality.

I think I need to come up with a term for the section of philosophy I was talking about, but there may not be enough coffee in the world to accomplish that.

Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 10, 2008 12:01 PM

StuV@289. Beginnings of science and scepticism about religion (Thales and other pre-Socratics); post-Dark-Age revival of science (Ibn al-Haytham and other Islamic thinkers, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon); beginnings of political science (Machiavelli, Hobbes); theory of limited government (Locke); demolition of "proofs" of God (Hume, Kant); arguments for women's rights (Woolstonecroft, Mill), democracy (Condorcet, Mill) and animal welfare (Bentham); understanding of the foundations of mathematics (Frege, Russell, Goedel), understanding of consciousness (Dennett) - oh, sorry, you said I was to name one. Oh well.

Posted by: StuV | June 10, 2008 12:18 PM

Nick: I stand corrected. I had a somewhat warped view of philosophy (the closest definition I can give you is "whatever I find silly in philosophy").

The coffee, it is not helping.

Posted by: Iain Walker | June 10, 2008 12:53 PM

windy (#295);

Is it Hudson's argument? It's not in the reference Brenda gave.

Hudson isn't rehashing Aquinas exactly, but as far as I can tell from the material Brenda posted, it's basically the same argument with differences in emphasis. Both Hudson and Aquinas start with the premise that most if not all concrete things in our experience exist contingently, and conclude that everything must be ultimately dependent for their existence on a single, non-contingently existing thing ("And this we call God," as Aquinas liked to say).

The reasoning from premise to conclusion differs slightly in that Hudson emphasises the alleged contingency of the set of contingent things, while Aquinas emphasises the alleged impossibility of an infinite regress of contingent dependency. But otherwise both arguments are open to the same counter-objections (quantifier-shift fallacy etc). As well as the similarity of premise and conclusion, it's the same style of sloppy inference that places them in the same bracket.

Posted by: J | June 10, 2008 1:06 PM

I thought of a few possibilities for why you'd sent it. I was pretty well the only person who engaged constructively with you earlier. I considered the possibility that you were sending me a message that you were independent-minded by criticising me, effectively saying that "just because you were nice to me before isn't a get-out-of-jail free card". Another possibility I thought of is that you still have "unfinished business", hadn't let go of that fight and walked away, and wanted to start the whole thing up again. I doubt you had that as a conscious goal, but you might be feeling some niggling dissatisfaction at how the other threads ended. Starting it up again means it's not over and there's still time to "win". Maybe one or two other possibilities crossed my mind.
Come on, Emmet, cut it out with the psychoanalysis. You were indeed nice to me given the situation, but I thought you were being to some extent unfair in apologizing for people who were explicitly confronting the content of my posts. In my opinion, intelligent people like nearly all posters on Pharyngula really ought to be able to keep themselves from continually misrepresenting someone and conflating attitude with substance. Then I saw you seemingly apologizing for them once again (although maybe not -- I haven't read this thread thoroughly). That's why I posted.

Anyway, I have to thank you for remaining level-headed the whole time, and for making many interesting points.

Posted by: StuV | June 10, 2008 1:17 PM

Nick: Thanks for the term. Yes, that would be a good chunk of it.

Posted by: J | June 10, 2008 1:32 PM

StuV@289. Beginnings of science and scepticism about religion (Thales and other pre-Socratics); post-Dark-Age revival of science (Ibn al-Haytham and other Islamic thinkers, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon); beginnings of political science (Machiavelli, Hobbes); theory of limited government (Locke); demolition of "proofs" of God (Hume, Kant); arguments for women's rights (Woolstonecroft, Mill), democracy (Condorcet, Mill) and animal welfare (Bentham); understanding of the foundations of mathematics (Frege, Russell, Goedel), understanding of consciousness (Dennett) - oh, sorry, you said I was to name one. Oh well.
The "proofs" of God are worthless elements of the worthless intersection of philosophy and theology. Frege, Russell and Gödel were trained as mathematicians, and their technical work on logic arguably mathematics. Dennett's theory on consciousness is good stuff, but he famously shuns traditional academic philosophy and grounds himself in real science.

I don't know much about the "ethical" things on your list, but I don't reckon they're all that deep, to be honest.

Posted by: Paul W. | June 10, 2008 2:36 PM

MPhil,

I think that in this kind of forum, it is useful to give a basic overview of the kind of game that is being played when people apply things like modal logic to things like God.

While I agree with you in general that sometimes sophisticated technical discussions are necessarily jargon-laden and difficult for the layman, I think that in this case BrokenSoldier is right. You and Brenda could make the basic issues a whole lot clearer to a lot of people.

Or at least you could; I suspect that Brenda---apologies if I am wrong---is not actually very sophisticated about things like this, and in fact even less sophisticated than me. (And I am no expert.) You, on the other hand, could likely clarify some basics if you made the effort.

I attempted to do that---with my own slant---in several posts. Brenda and you ignored that. Nick did some similar substantive discussing, which also got ignored.

That's very tiresome. Why should we bother to engage on substance if we're just going to be ignored?

I think that in this case, it's important to explain some basic issues in applying modal logic to proofs about necessary beings construed as God. It's not only a good excercise, but crucial to understanding what's wrong with Brenda's interpretation of this particular proof.

I'll recap some points I've made, and add a few more:

1. The modal logic "necessary" and "possible" operators don't mean much. You have to use axioms that respect the particular sense of "necessary" and "possible" is relevant to what you're talking about.

For example, I could use modal logic to represent what is physically possible according to some laws of physics that I take as true and assert as axioms. The laws of physics would "necessarily" constrain particular states of the world, which I might model all of as contingent (possible).

If I axiomatize physics incorrectly, of course, I can validly prove all kinds of garbage. My proof may be sound in logical terms, but will simply not apply to the real world. "Garbage in, garbage out" applies to sound logical proofs as much as to anything else.

Alternatively, I could use the same modal logic to correctly axiomatize the very same physics in a different way. I might model the random aspect of quantum events as "possible" and the underlying quantum physics plus a starting initial state of the cosmos as "necessary". I might have a hierarchy of possible states of affairs, with dependencies on prior quantum random events making a state of affairs "more contingent."

Given that, the interpretation is still largely up for grabs. For example, I might believe in a Copenhagen-type interpretation of my quantum physics, with superposed eigenstates that aren't "real" in the same sense as decohered observed reality, or I might believe in a many-worlds type interpretation in which there really are vast number of universes that are just as real as this one, and my "possible worlds" defined by my use of my modal logic map onto actual physical realities. My proof likely would not distinguish between those things.

Still another issue is whether the modal logic is being used to model what we would normally mean by "necessity"---that something had to be the case, or whether it's only modeling what we infer has to have been the case in light of observations we've made.

(For example, there's an enormous difference between inferring that Mr. Green must have killed Miss Scarlet in the drawing room with the lead pipe and inferring that he had to do it for some deep reason.)

Still another question is whether the logical theory is modeling subjective possibility, or some kind of objective "possibility". If I believe the universe is effectively deterministic, for example, I might use logical "possibility" to represent things that I am sure are either physically possible or physically impossible, but I don't know which given the limited information available.

That's just scratching the surface of the varied possible meanings of "necessary" and "possible" in modal logic. Many interpretations are possible, and none are necessary.

The take-home lesson from that is: never buy a modal logic proof without a very serious and convincing natural language discussion of what the proof writer intends "possible" or "necessary" to represent. The modal logic operators do not correspond directly to the natural language terms. They are used to define a particular concept of necessity vs. contingency, which must be justified.

(And really, they don't define anything, in the intuitive sense. Sets of axioms in a logic don't intrinsically refer to anything. The stated relations just constrain what the proof can reasonably be used to refer to.)

1. Proofs like this generally assume, one way or another, that there are at least some contingent things, and at least some necessary things. They usually conclude that there is some absolutely necessary thing, i.e., one that is construed to be something that had to be.

On reflection, it's very far from obvious that the assumptions are reasonable. In normal natural-language talk that makes sense, necessity and possibility are always relative---given certain things we take as true, and some that we don't know, some other things have to be true, and some other things don't "have to be" false.

When it comes to things resembling a first cause, it's just not clear that this normal intuitive kind of reasoning is valid. Our intuitions clearly break down right around there.

There is nothing like a consensus on whether it makes even a little sense to talk about something being absolutely necessary in reality. In every other case, necessity and possibility are always relative to something being taken as true or real---given that P, Q must also be true, and R doesn't have to be true but doesn't have to be false.

This kind of problem arises from the usual natural language ontological and cosmological arguments, of course; formalizing things in modal logic doesn't make the problem go away. It does often serve to obscure it.

So far as anybody actually knows, everything may be contingent in the most basic sense. Maybe the cosmos didn't have to be, but is anyway.

Likewise, if anything is necessarily true or real in a deep sense, maybe everything is. For example, on a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, all physically possible things may be actual in some actual universe. It may be that whatever the first cause or ultimate ground of being is, everything else about the universe may be a necessary consequence of that.

I'm not just making that up as a weird example. It's grounded in serious cosmology. Some cosmologists think that at root, the universe is describable by a very simple formula, a Theory of Everything, and everything else we observe necessarily follows from that simple set of regularities. All talk of "possibility" is subjective---i.e., about which inevitable universe we happen to find ourselves in.

In that kind of cosmos, the usual distinction between absolute necessity and possibility just collapses.

The take-home lesson from that is that when looking at extraordinary claims of absolute necessity, you should be very, very skeptical. Does the proof-writer know something about ultimate reality that cosmologists don't know? Or are they just making convenient distinctions that let them get the answer they want?

There's more, but I think that's probably enough for now.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 10, 2008 3:14 PM

Come on, Emmet, cut it out with the psychoanalysis.

If you missed negentropyeater@#249, it's worth reading.

FWIW, I perceive your tone as habitually aggressive. That doesn't bother me a whole lot, I might be somewhat oversensitive, but it requires some consideration on my part to respond rather than react. I do understand why other people get very upset with you. If I reacted the way my gut tugs, the conversation would ultimately generate more heat than light. Just so y'know, FWIW.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 10, 2008 3:29 PM

which Negentropyeater @249 ?

Posted by: Kseniya | June 10, 2008 3:51 PM

Sirs/Madames:

It can be found here (spaces added to stop the comment going into moderation)

Last time I looked, links will not push a comment into moderation until the number of links reaches or exceeds three. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, the comment will go into moderation according to rules determined by The Second Anti-Spam Council of Antioch.

There are other moderation triggers, however. For example, I once had a comment held because it contained the word "Caledoniаn". I don't know if that trigger is still active... ;-)

Posted by: StuV | June 10, 2008 3:55 PM

Thanks, Kseniya. It's been a while since I watched that one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk

Posted by: 12th Monkey | June 10, 2008 4:56 PM

Sets of axioms in a logic don't intrinsically refer to anything. The stated relations just constrain what the proof can reasonably be used to refer to.

Hofstadter goes into great detail on this subject in his famous "Godel, Escher, Bach" which is a very readable presentation of some very complex and deep topics written, unlike Brenda's crap, in a very non-condescending style. In short, beware of geeks bearing axioms as the system they sell you might have nothing to do with reality and be full of many little commandos of obscurantism and mythology to boot.

Posted by: Galloway | June 10, 2008 5:35 PM

I've read Vox Day's blog for some time. One thing that I have noticed, is that he has always been unable, or unwilling to provide the attributes for the god that he worships. If he would, maybe some of the skeptic 'heavyweights' would accept his offer to debate.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 10, 2008 7:05 PM

J,

why do you necessarily assume that there is a witch hunt, or something unreasonable ? As far as I can see, there is one commenter, J, who has chosen not to form part of the group and is seeking confrontation, and several commenters reacting to it. It's because of the desiquilibrium in the numbers, that it appears unreasonable to you, but should you blame the group for this ? You have chosen to make the comment, it's up to you to convince others, if you want to make it appear as if it's more balanced.
Don't think that people are waiting here for your comment so that they can somehow catch you, that people are after you.
I too despise cheerleading, but I don't think that debate is best served with confrontation.

Posted by: SC | June 10, 2008 7:16 PM

If he would, maybe some of the skeptic 'heavyweights' would accept his offer to debate.

It would be unethical (also contrary to international intellectual boxing regulations and possibly illegal) for a heavyweight to accept to fight a mini flyweight.

Posted by: JeffreyD | June 10, 2008 7:50 PM

SC, re you #324, reminds me of one of the better put downs I ever heard real life. At a bar, one egregious theist offered to engage my friend in a battle of wits on the subject of gawd. Said friend replied that he would never fight someone completely unarmed.

Bye

Posted by: Ken Cope | June 10, 2008 10:18 PM

I have a hard time calmly discussing things in a thread where I am still called a fucking slut. This is the second thread in a row were there is someone new coming in and confirming everything that I've said.

Nobody is really interested in the topics you want to bash us over the head with in the name of discussion, and such behavior has warranted worse than you've gotten.

Once upon a time, a lot of people hated Yoko Ono. John Lennon defended her, saying, "Yoko is a supreme intellectual! I'll tell you why nobody likes her music: because she's a woman, and she's Oriental, that's why!" when the fact that she's an Oriental woman is merely incidental to the fact that nobody liked her music.

If it gives you comfort to believe that nobody here has a more sophisticated response to your ideas and your opinion of yourself than to call you a fucking slut, and that reflects poorly on everybody but you, well, then, whatever gets you through the night. It's just that you are far from the first narcissistic punter to barge in all infatuated with whatever it is the rest of us had bloody well better be impressed with. Many of us have recovered from the morbid embarrassment resulting from later, candid and honest self-evaluation of stages in our development we survived. You may someday get over yourself too.

BTW, what is so wrong with being a slut?

Posted by: CJO | June 11, 2008 12:35 AM

I have a hard time calmly discussing things in a thread where I am still called a fucking slut. This is the second thread in a row were there is someone new coming in and confirming everything that I've said.

Posted by: SC | June 11, 2008 3:48 AM

Steve Zara:

It may sometimes be appropriate to ask for an explanation to be simplified, but that is no excuse for calling the rigorous and formal version "obscurantist".

In my (social-science) discipline, though, there's often a lot of false precision underlying "sophisticated" analyses. If you've, say, operationalized the variables in a highly questionable way, the elaborate statistical analysis you then erect on their basis is a hollow structure. So I take Paul W.'s warnings to heart, and view claims to greater "rigor" in the context of apologetics skeptically.

Could you maybe provide some concrete examples to illustrate what you're saying?

Posted by: Steve Zara | June 11, 2008 7:21 AM

They should also be ready to explain why technical terms are necessary and relevant to the argument at hand and why lay terminology will not suffice.

That is a reasonable point. However, translating an argument to lay technology is a skill in itself. Sometimes it can't be done in anything other than a way that oversimplifies things. This is a framing problem.

A problem with philosophy is that it uses words that are in common use in the English language, but which have specific and precise philosophical meanings in that context. It is the same sort of issue as we encounter with the word "theory". So, what may look like obscurity is actually not what it seems.

I think what I have a problem with here is the attitude that what looks like obscurity is a deliberate attempt to look clever and alienate people. Of course, sometimes it might be, but let's assume innocence before guilt!

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 11, 2008 7:52 AM

Lilly,

the original comment about obscurantism was made by Paul W. in his #315, and I have to completely agree with him, and disagree with Steve.

On the other hand, I think disagree with MPhil about some of these "more sophisticated" arguments. They are mostly the unsophisticated arguments in new, impressive, obscurantist clothing.

Paul is refering to these Plantiga type revamped philosophical/logical arguments about the existence of God(s), or the kind Brenda tried to present. You can try to make them 100 times more complicated and obscure, it won't change the fact that evidence for God won't be found through obscure mental games, but through empirical evidence. That's how I understood his use of the term obscurantism, and I give him right.

Posted by: Lilly de Lure | June 11, 2008 8:01 AM

Steve Zara said:

A problem with philosophy is that it uses words that are in common use in the English language, but which have specific and precise philosophical meanings in that context. It is the same sort of issue as we encounter with the word "theory". So, what may look like obscurity is actually not what it seems.

A fair point - anyone with a passing familiarity with the evo wars knows what a headache the T-word can be! However if this is a recurring problem then surely the onus is on the person using the word in a way other than lay-people are using it to explain why the context in which they are using it is different to the common usage and what they mean by it (as scientists regularly do with relation to the word "theory" in order to prevent it's misuse by creationists) when writing for lay people.

I know it can be a pest to constantly be defining terms that seem to be obvious but it does have the virtue of pre-empting the attitudes that you are complaining about whilst leaving the guilty much more easy to expose.

Nick Gotts said:

But in some areas, most notable mathematics, definitions of technical terms may quite legitimately be piled so high on top of each other that it would take an intelligent novice months to get to the top.

Again, fair point. However in which case an acknowledgement of this (together with as many explanations as possible and a note of where you can go to find out more) and an explanation of why the stacking of technical terms in such a way is unavoidable would be preferable to merely chiding critics for being "unsophisticated".

Posted by: Paul W. | June 11, 2008 8:19 AM

As I said earlier, I'm not bashing technical philosophy or formal logic in general; far from it.

SC's analogy to statistics is apt. You can like with formal logic in much the same way that you can lie with statistics. Even if the proof is quite sound, if you misinterpret the terms going in and coming out, you can turn the crank and get utter garbage.

That doesn't mean logic is bad, or usually obscurantist. Just that it's dismaying to see something as beautiful as modal logic---an elegant system meant to clarify things---used in a cheap sleight-of-hand trick.

(I once went to a logician colleague who happens to be Catholic with one of these proofs, and my rebuttal. He was even more appalled than I was, and urged me to publish the rebuttal. He had way too much integrity to think it's okay to abuse logic to lie for Jesus.)

Posted by: SC | June 11, 2008 8:37 AM

Well, in truth, when I wrote that I had in mind more the contemporary (ab)use of statistics, but I'm hardly going to miss an opportunity to give C. Wright Mills a plug. :)

Posted by: Paul W. | June 11, 2008 8:46 AM

I think there may be a problem with dismissing an argument simply because it appears obscure and is from a theologist or believer.

I think it is reasonable to say "I won't deal with your argument because it uses God as a foundation, and that is question-begging" if that is the case. But, if it isn't the case, it is helpful to be able to show they are wrong, isn't it? I don't see how simply labelling an argument as "obscure" does that.

Steve, did you read my extensive comments above about "necessity" and "contingency"?

I was trying to be reasonably specific about how these kinds of proofs are in fact "obscure." They generally hinge on one of several ambiguities in the natural language terms "necessarily" and "possibly," a misleading equation of those senses with the modal operators, and question-begging assumptions about absolute necessity.

For those hip the jargon, I also mentioned that mentioned that most of these proofs use S2 or S3 modal logic, where necessity vs. possibility is a binary distinction, as opposed to S5, which can represent nested possible worlds like the ones you get in a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Using S2 or S3 might be reasonable if everything else was reasonable---use the fewest axioms you need to make your point---but it also serves to de-emphasize the relative nature of possibility and contingency on any interpretation I can make sense of.

It's a setup. By assuming that you can say something can simply be "necessary," and that at least one thing is actually necessary and another actual thing is simply contingent, you're pretty much writing the conclusion into the premises. It's basically transliterating medieval terms into modal logic syntax.

That is not what modal logic is for. Modal logic is very expressive, and if you're going to formalize these things, you should bite the bullet and use modal logic as something more than a veneer for the same old simplistic, question-begging shit.

The problem is that these people don't actually have good arguments for things like "absolute necessity," or the "contigency" of the observed universe in that sense. They can't show that everything's not contingent, or that everything's not necessary, so they just skip that part and write convenient assumptions into their proofs.

They can't make a convincing philosophical argument, so instead they express an unconvincing one with impressive notation. That's not philosophy; it's wanking.

Saul Kripke is spinning in his grave. (He was the genius who worked out the possible worlds semantics for modal logic and made it respectable.)

Posted by: steve zara | June 11, 2008 9:15 AM

Paul-

It wasn't really targeted at anyone. It was probably attacking a straw-man position that no-one had actually made :)

Your point about that specific type of obscurity is well made.

Posted by: SC | June 11, 2008 9:24 AM

Also, not all reasoning is to do with empirical reality. If we insist that it is, we set up a new "NOMA" in which theology is acceptable providing it doesn't deal with empirical reality. I would rather challenge it in all areas. Philosophy helps with this.

I see your point, but then aren't we just playing their game, on their terms? What silly questions will they have us debating next?

Posted by: Steve Zara | June 11, 2008 10:00 AM

SC-
I thought the "proofs" under discussion here purported to demonstrate "god" via logic applied to the known cosmos.

That was what this theologist thought he had. It saved time to show that he couldn't even begin to use such logic, as his "Trinity" was not consistent.

Posted by: J | June 11, 2008 11:23 AM

Academic philosophy has arguably had a net negative effect on human thought. (I'm talking about Marxism, logical positivism, Nietzcheism, obscurantism, dualism, etc.)

Certainly, given their many documented blunders of the past,and their (with very few exceptions) being unable to produce anything of use at all, I'm disinclined to trust to their authority as "technical experts" -- especially if what they're saying looks and smells like nonsense or overcomplication.

Posted by: Kyrie Eleison | June 11, 2008 12:26 PM

If not Vox Day, Mr Myers, than who pray tell, would you consider "qualified" to have a public dialogue with you?

You know who the players are; please give us a few names. Maybe there are non-interative skeptics here who might have some genuine suggestions.

Posted by: windy | June 11, 2008 12:34 PM

If people say they have arguments for the existence of God, don't we have to show that these arguments are false?

I guess the point of Paul W and others was, why not cut to the chase and point out that they are usually not arguments for the existence of God, only arguments for the existence of something. Why not concentrate on whether the step "and this something, we call God" makes sense.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 11, 2008 1:55 PM

Steve,

No, I think you have misunderstood me. I have absolutely no confusion over theology and philosophy. I know a couple of people with degrees in philosophy rather well, and they would never let me away with that!

What I am saying is that the "proof" reeks of bad philosophy. The subject matter makes it suspect, and the word-play makes it stink to high heaven. Once one has unmasked the willful misrepresentation, why bother with further analysis? The correctness of a proof is utterly irrelevant if it's patently obvious that the model bears no resemblance to reality.

I just don't think it is enough to have a feeling that certain arguments are "transparent word-play".

I certainly don't think it helps to say "a God proof, puh-leeze!)".

Is it the good philosophy, or the word-play and wanking?

By understanding philosophy, surely.

I think being a molecular biologist would certainly help in utterly demolishing the specific claim of irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum, for example, by showing similar structures and how they are, in fact, coopted to evolve the flagelleum.

However, I doubt that a molecular biologist would then go on to make the claim that molecular biology is the only way to attack ID, which appears to be the analogue of the claim you are making for philosophy. I could argue that irreducible complexity is poorly-defined, subjective, experimentally unmeasurable, and scientifically useless, for example. That's a good argument that doesn't require me to be a molecular biologist. Similarly, I can attack this particular philosophical argument without being a philosopher.

My point is not that we shouldn't throw rocks at bad arguments until they're dead, it is that once you're sure it's dead, it's not necessary to throw more rocks at it. If you're having fun throwing rocks, that's fine, I like target-practice too and I've enjoyed other people throw rocks much bigger and faster than I could have. That doesn't mean that the rock I threw wasn't big enough or fast enough to kill it.

If you want to unleash a fusillade of supersonic car-size boulders to kill a mouse, fine, but I think bashing it in the head with a brick makes it just as dead.

Posted by: Kyrie Eleison | June 11, 2008 2:46 PM

"Dawkins' "Ultimate Boeing 747" argument as a novel contribution to philosophy. It really is quite amusing to consider that philosophers have been debating God for centuries, yet a simple argument like Dawkins' is seen by some professional philosophers as illuminating and original."

I agree the original Boeing argument is silly. A hurricane through a scrap yard couldn't even produce a hinge or a bolt, or a paperclip, much less an entire 747.

As far as "professional" philosophers being impressed with Dawkins' argument, you can recruit a billion people to be impressed with something. That still doesn't make it true.

Posted by: J | June 11, 2008 3:08 PM

As far as "professional" philosophers being impressed with Dawkins' argument, you can recruit a billion people to be impressed with something. That still doesn't make it true.
Eh? What's wrong with Dawkins' argument?

Posted by: SC | June 11, 2008 3:14 PM

If you want to unleash a fusillade of supersonic car-size boulders to kill a mouse, fine, but I think bashing it in the head with a brick makes it just as dead.

I wish I had a row of colorful, cheering emoticons to show how much I like this.

That was what this theologist thought he had. It saved time to show that he couldn't even begin to use such logic, as his "Trinity" was not consistent.

It would save time for me to ask for proof of an entity's existence before debating it. But that's me. It's possible that given your strengths you could very easily make the logical-inconsistency argument. However, history has shown (and MPhil stated above) that such critiques don't kill the argument but instead tend lead to even more scholastic proofs, which in turn lead to equally scholastic rebuttals, and so on till you're playing in the mud at Wankstock. Why go there with them?

Posted by: Kseniya | June 11, 2008 3:36 PM

Eduction is your enemy. Only belief can save you.

Posted by: J | June 11, 2008 3:41 PM

Why is it impressive?
I think that's a silly question, as the argument speaks for itself. If you find it unimpressive, this must be because you consider it fallacious, derivative, or something else. You should explain why you think this.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 11, 2008 3:44 PM

LOL

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 11, 2008 3:55 PM

For those who don't know Greek, "Kyrie Eleison" — "Κύριε ἐλέησον" — means "Big Invisible Sky Fairy, don't smite".

Well, OK, it's more like "O Lord, have mercy".

Posted by: brokenSoldier, OM | June 11, 2008 4:03 PM

Steve:

It may sometimes be appropriate to ask for an explanation to be simplified, but that is no excuse for calling the rigorous and formal version "obscurantist".

If the person making an argument clearly has the ability to make that argument a little clearer and more concise, but chooses not to, then I don't see any problem with saying such tactics in argumentation are obscurantist. The reason I made the comment about MPhil's posts is because - as I clearly stated - I got the impression from his blog that he possesses the intelligence to be a little more concise in his posts.

Using arguments that are clearly going to go over the head of anyone that hasn't studied the subjects mentioned in MPhil's response, even though you know how to make your points without writing in such a fashion, seems arrogant to me. If we were on a site in which the discussion of modal logic or transfinite mathematics and their application in dealing with these topics was commonplace, then such posts would fit in quite nicely.

That said, I never insinuated that the posts I mentioned did not make sense - merely that their use here without some form of clarification of the more technical language within did not make much sense if those who made them are interested in the success of those arguments on this particular site.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 11, 2008 4:08 PM

SC:

I wish I had a row of colorful, cheering emoticons to show how much I like this.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 11, 2008 4:26 PM

We live in a culture that has for centuries now cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes.

Speaking of Greek — the root of "skeptic", "skeptomai" (σκέπτομαι), means "think".

The skeptical person, the one who thinks about standards of evidence and epistemology, is always smarter than the one who merely believes.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 11, 2008 4:30 PM

...degree that is of no use except to hopefully impress someone?

I know I'm going to regret this, but just what university degrees would you include in that category?

Well, I would say that a university degree in theology would be of no use except to hopefully impress someone.

But that's no doubt because I'm a skeptic.

Posted by: Josh | June 11, 2008 4:34 PM

Well, I would say that a university degree in theology would be of no use except to hopefully impress someone.

But that's no doubt because I'm a skeptic.

I dunno, I always enjoyed studying fiction.

Good call, though, Owl...I didn't think of that one.

Posted by: spurge | June 11, 2008 4:40 PM

"No doubt they are all "of no use except to hopefully impress someone"."

Epic fail.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 11, 2008 5:03 PM

Ok, philosopher with an emphasis on christianity, not theologian. My mistake. Not that it matters much in this context.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 11, 2008 5:13 PM

I love quoteminton. I'll bat a softie back to Kyrie:

"You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it." ~ Carl Sagan

"Свеча и очки бесполезны, если сова не хочет видеть."

Posted by: Sastra | June 11, 2008 5:19 PM

Kyrie Eleison #375 quoted:

"We live in a culture that has for centuries now cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes."

I disagree with this.

I think that -- at least in America -- the cultural stamp of approval is very heavily on the side of "having faith." The average person seems to be inculcated from all sides with the view that Belief in God is the mark of a wise, warm, compassionate, open-minded person -- and atheism is the hallmark of a cramped and narrow mind, incapable of seeing below the surface of things. Atheists repeatedly show up at the very bottom of every poll which tries to measure respect and acceptance for various groups.

Atheists are not seen as being smart of intelligent -- they are seen as arrogant, yet foolish. That's very different.

"Only a very hardy individualist, social rebel, or one desperate for another life, stands any chance of discovering the substantiality of the spiritual life today."

Is this quote about Opposite World? Or is this Opposite Day?

I think recent polls have about 96% of the United States professing a belief in God. The only place this is reversed, as far as I know, is with the most prestigious members of major science organizations. Virtually everyone claims to be "spiritual," if not religious. They may not all pursue the rigorous paths, but they all nod towards them with respect, as the gold standard.

This quotation is so contrary to the facts of the matter that I suspect its author has some deep-seated personal need to see himself as a part of an elite, persecuted minority of brave and fearless mavericks. It's hard to see how he could have otherwise gotten our culture so wrong.

Posted by: tony (not a vegan) | June 11, 2008 5:26 PM

Sastra@390: on Kyrie

I suspect its author has some deep-seated personal need to see himself as a part of an elite, persecuted minority of brave and fearless mavericks

It's the religious need for martyrdom. You can't be a martyr if you're in the hegemony, so you need to believe you are in a persecuted minority. Maybe that's why there are so many religious schisms, sects, and cults. The meme regognizes the need to keep the 'in' population smaller than the 'out' population, so as to maintain the martyr complex.

its all a load of bollocks to be honest.

Posted by: Carlie | June 11, 2008 5:44 PM

For those who don't know Greek, "Kyrie Eleison" -- "Κύριε ἐλέησον" -- means "Big Invisible Sky Fairy, don't smite".

I thought that it was name of the road that Mr. Mister had to travel down through the darkness of the night.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 11, 2008 5:54 PM

Sastra:

I suspect its author has some deep-seated personal need to see himself as a part of an elite, persecuted minority of brave and fearless mavericks.

Well, of course. As a Christian, he's required to play the "persecuted minority" card from time to time. Otherwise he'd have to offer an argumentum ad populum as evidence of the legitimacy and veracity of the belief system. Hey, whatever works.

Posted by: Norman Doering | June 11, 2008 6:05 PM

Uhh Ohh, VD is getting pissed on his blog:

...he not only didn't grasp the nature of the proposed subject matter, but actually thinks that PZ's "counter-proposal" to post an argument on my blog is somehow a reasonable substitute for a form of discourse that would force PZ to put his reputation, such as it is, on the line. Gee, I can post to my own blog? Really? Brilliant! I'd never thought of that! But, since the clueless wonder declares that I'm incapable of reasonable discourse, there's obviously no reason to bother with him anymore. John Derbyshire feels otherwise, and I'd much rather engage in metaphorical fisticuffs with the good Derb anyhow.

I think PZ feels the same way; VD is "incapable of reasonable discourse," so why does VD keep posting challenges to PZ?

Maybe PZ should open a post and invite VD to argue here and then let the rest of you guys tear into him:

As for PZ, if he wishes to host a debate about the existence of gods on his blog, I'll be there.

There's no reason to do much else besides open a thread for VD, this post is at over 300 comments and PZ obviously wouldn't have to bother doing any debating himself. Everybody else wants to tear into him it looks like.

I would read some of that, but not all... not over a hundred posts, may twenty...?

Posted by: tony (not a vegan) | June 11, 2008 6:13 PM

Kseniya, DennisN, et al: re argumentum ad populum versus martyred minority

I think there are two competing memes at play here, resulting in significant cognitive dissonance on the part of the affected population.

Meme1 demands that affected persons are in the majority, and that their writ runs large in the rule of the land.

Meme2 requires that the population remain smaller than 'the enemy' others to support the martyrdom complex.

Obvious why they're fucked-up, then, isn't it?

Posted by: SC | June 11, 2008 6:22 PM

Anyhow, Rich, I think you're forgetting that regardless of what you might think of me, I have far more credibility in the media and around the world than PZ Myers does. US Congressmen, Fortune 500 CEOs, international economists, and famous novelists aren't about to return his calls.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 11, 2008 6:57 PM

Maybe the stuffed pink squid should debate him.

Honestly, folks, VD is such an odious character that he shouldn't be entertained at all by PZ. He should be ridiculed, insulted, and ignored. If you've read even a little of VD, you'll quickly realise that he's a vile racist misogynist bile-spewing hate-mongering sack of shit, an advocate of genocide on an unprecedented scale. If you have the tiniest shred of decency, reading his words will leave you stunned and speechless: there is nothing low enough or contemptible enough to deserve comparison with him, no Godwinian reference to any historical person or group, nor any insult can even begin to do justice to his nature. His brand of evil is so undiluted, it needs new words to express.

Posted by: Steve_C | June 11, 2008 7:08 PM

Vox Day. Vox Dei. Opus Dei.

I'm sure he enjoys beating himself...

Posted by: Steve_C | June 11, 2008 7:16 PM

Isn't Open Dei also the Catholic organization that likes to sport the cilice?

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 11, 2008 7:27 PM

Carlie #394 wrote:

For those who don't know Greek, "Kyrie Eleison" -- "Κύριε ἐλέησον" -- means "Big Invisible Sky Fairy, don't smite".

I thought that it was name of the road that Mr. Mister had to travel down through the darkness of the night.

Gold!

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 11, 2008 7:38 PM

Isn't Open Dei also the Catholic organization that likes to sport the cilice?

They're often said to be "like a Catholic Freemasonry", and, although they reject that characterisation, it's probably pretty accurate nowadays. They're an ultra-conservative and somewhat secretive Catholic "club", who have a reputation for "looking out for each other" in much the same way that the Freemasons are said to favour other Freemasons in business deals, promotions, and so on.

Posted by: brokenSoldier, OM | June 11, 2008 8:13 PM

Vox Day. Vox Dei. Opus Dei. I'm sure he enjoys beating himself...

Considering that he loves to come on this site and provoke arguments that end in his utter (and quite hilarious, I might add) ridicule, I'd say he definitely is quite fond of self-mutilation...

Posted by: Tim B. | June 11, 2008 8:36 PM

My goodness gracious! You people are really something else. It is a pleasure to read through such thoughtful comments. (No, I'm not being sarcastic.)

I'd asked a pretty naive question about proof of God, and Brenda was the first (I think) to reply. But whereas I was lookin' for more-or-less solid type examples of proof, she went off on some abstract tangent. She has also shown herself to be condescending and insulting.

But here's the good part:

Other posters here weighed in with incisive, thorough, and civilized rebuttals to her "example" of proof.

I wonder what it is about you folks? It's not just a matter of intelligence, is it? Generally speaking, what is it that sets ya'll apart from the god-botherers? I'd guess it has something to do with an introspective nature, one that, over years of life experience, has quietly observed reality's odd mix of the banal and profound. And each open-minded, curious reach into the world allows a new connection to route its way through the mind and memory.

So, might a supple internal connectivity be the answer?...be the reason that ya'll (for the most part) can view and discuss an issue or problem from so many angles and sides at once?...in contrast to that other breed that seems so compartmentalized in their thinking and, through denying the innate human trait of curiosity, seems so intellectually constipated?

Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 11, 2008 8:47 PM

Wowbagger - I think so. He calls himself a "Christian libertarian", but his version of Christianity is the purest, most unashamed example of power-worship I've ever encountered. Makes me nostalgic for the simple stupidities of Kenny, the wriggling and weaseling of buckyball, even the braying arrogance of "grow up people".

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 11, 2008 9:00 PM

Christian libertarian?

So, people free to do pretty much whatever they want - as long as it's within the scope of Judeo-Xian morality?

How the heck does that work? It's taking compartmentalisation to a whole new level. Well, that or hypocrisy...

Posted by: Norman Doering | June 11, 2008 9:21 PM

windy asked:

What's wrong with the way Steve Zara, Owlmirror and others were addressing Vox directly in this thread?

Nothing wrong with what Zara and Owlmirror were doing. It's just that Vox asked for it: "... PZ, if he wishes to host a debate about the existence of gods on his blog, I'll be there," and this would be a way to respond to one petty one-upper with another.

It seems that he is more intent on one-upping Dawkins or PZ as persons than comparing the arguments for theism and atheism themselves.

I agree. But I don't see anything wrong with playing that game with VD if it doesn't take too much effort and then there are also just too many comments here and they need a new place to post 'em.

Posted by: Carlie | June 11, 2008 9:55 PM

I hear the sort of whooshing sound that means that a pop culture reference is going way over my head.

Oh, no, Owlmirror, please don't report me to the Seed overlords!! I swear I wasn't really calling anyone a slut!

Your dose of the 80s

Posted by: windy | June 11, 2008 10:19 PM

I do appreciate the principle underpinning your suggestion: that we should be open to ideas no matter what their source

That was part of my angle, but I was also thinking about a more science fictiony scenario: what if the most odious person you can imagine would happen to be the only one in the history of the universe with an airtight argument for God? (Prepare to enter... the Scary Door.)

Posted by: Kseniya | June 11, 2008 10:31 PM

Tim:

I'd guess it has something to do with an introspective nature, one that, over years of life experience, has quietly observed reality's odd mix of the banal and profound.

Well, that's it in my case. *cough*

Be careful; don't heap too much praise on this group. It'll get a swolled head, if it hasn't already.

:-)

Posted by: StuV | June 12, 2008 12:04 AM

Thanks for not posting the full URLs, Nick. I've been known to not be able to help myself if lunacy is but a click away.

Posted by: buckyball | June 12, 2008 12:11 AM

@ #418, Nick Gotts:

"Makes me nostalgic for the simple stupidities of Kenny, the wriggling and weaseling of buckyball, even the braying arrogance of "grow up people".

Actually, I'm just debating how involved I want to get here. Besides, Mr. Myers field of study is quite different from mine, and so I only have a limited interest in what he posts. I do, however, have sufficient "evidence" that goes well beyond what has been discussed here, fwiw. It would certainly make for lively debate material, but I couldn't imagine Mr. Myers taking the time out from his busy schedule to talk it over with me.

I could also post pages and pages about why Calvinism is a rather shaky theology, but in the end, who would care? This is not the place for it...

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 12, 2008 12:38 AM

I couldn't imagine Mr. Myers taking the time out from his busy schedule to talk it over with me.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 12, 2008 1:26 AM

I've heard that song zillions of times as background music

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 12, 2008 1:49 AM

Methinks it's a Grand Theft Auto 4 reference...

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 12, 2008 2:03 AM

My bad. I'm not that familiar with either; i just though since GTA4 was recent that'd be the one.

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 12, 2008 2:25 AM

There's not that much we have to cope with from fundies over here - compared to the US anyway. Religion (or lack thereof) is really one of those things people keep to themselves, as it should be.

But we'll lend a hand when we can. Though there's not much need on this blog; the ability of some of the 'regulars' to demolish all comers is awe-inspiring.

Posted by: PZ is Chickenshit | June 12, 2008 4:06 AM

PZ's post is full of enought ad hominems to flunk him out of Philosphy 101.

Does he know ad hominems constitute a logical fallacy, and are not an argument.

So how about this: PZ is chickenshit!

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 12, 2008 4:48 AM

spankweasel@#444,

Please state a proposition, the person proposing said proposition, and state the ad hominem used by PZ.

Since it's "full of ad hominems", you should have no difficulty doing this many, many times, but lets agree that 3 complete instances would be sufficient in order to accept your proposition that it's "full of ad hominems".

Begone, foul whoreson, to snivel at thy master's buttocks, thou puking spur-galled pumpion!

Posted by: Paul W. | June 12, 2008 9:38 AM

...be the reason that ya'll (for the most part) can view and discuss an issue or problem from so many angles and sides at once?...

In my case, it may be partly from hanging out with a few smart academic philosophers for years, regularly getting called on my bullshit and sometimes getting my ass thoroughly whupped.

It makes me a little more careful in my argumentation, but also optimistic about finding some useful information somewhere that I can bring to bear to bear to illuminate a point somehow.

Posted by: Paul W. | June 12, 2008 10:16 AM

That was part of my angle, but I was also thinking about a more science fictiony scenario: what if the most odious person you can imagine would happen to be the only one in the history of the universe with an airtight argument for God?

I can wait for VD's book to come out. If he's really managed to accomplish something that others have failed to do for thousands of years, there'll be plenty of interest then.

Until then, we have to assume that his supersecret new compelling evidence for God is nothing of the sort.

It's usually a bad idea to debate apologists in real time, because they standardly use illegitimate debating tactics that a naive audience will fall for.

Most often, they rush through a bunch of stuff that sounds good at first, and you don't have time to rebut it and still have time to make your points. You "lose" even if you're right and can prove you're right because you run out of time.

That's especially true if the person you're arguing against won't give a basic outline of their overall argument ahead of time.

I once publicly debated a theologian about the existence of God, and got bait-and-switched. He started defending a very weird concept of "God" and I wasn't prepared for that---all my prep time was wasted.

Luckily, that guy wasn't good at debating, and I "won" the debate anyway. (By a show of hands at the end.) Not mostly because my arguments were better than his---and they were, a lot better---but because I was faster on my feet. I could rebut his crap off the top of my head and still have time to point out his rhetorical cheesiness and score a few points of my own.

Really, I didn't "win"; he just lost. He just flat looked bad.

I was royally pissed. I "won" but it wasn't a fair fight. The audience was treated to an embarrassing spectacle, and given a very few good points to think about, but not much more.

A good debate shouldn't involve secret weapons and fast footwork. It should be about the honest and open clash of serious ideas.

Vox Day is clearly not the kind of person you can trust to enter into a debate in that spirit. PZ is right not to debate a punk demagogue in real time. It's a setup.

If VD has a good argument, he can put it out in the open for critique. If it's really a good argument, he can still win, against a reasonably prepared opponent. He shouldn't need the element of surprise.

Posted by: moondancer | June 13, 2008 9:29 AM

As an agnostic I don't rule out a supreme entity, or certainly a force beyond our comprehension.
What I do rule out is that any of the religions that sprang from the fears of nomads two millenium ago have relevance. I see no difference in judeo-christian/islam and the worship of brass monkeys, especially as they pertain to validating violence. The faster the earth evolves past this crutch, the better off the planet will be.

Posted by: God | June 13, 2008 4:51 PM

I consider reasoned debate to be a thin and bloodless substitute for screaming and hitting each other with sticks. Or rocks. Rocks are also good. Why do you think I gave Cain the thumbs-up?

Vox Day understands this intuitively. In an earlier era, he might have been a great prophet or saint, screaming for blood in My name, organizing lynch mobs and massacres.

Nowadays, he's just a pathetic pissant clown.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 15, 2008 2:57 PM

[quote]"Somebody somewhere is going to have to someday point me to some intelligent arguments for gods, because I've sure never found them."[/quote]
Some of the most convincing evidence for God is in the details of life: All life, even the simplest cell, is made up of the most advanced nanotechnolgy we have ever seen. Such technology, I'd argue, [i]requires[/i] an intelligence far beyond ours.
This is not an argument from ignorance - such as are made from unexplored phenomena - no, this is an argument from [i]research[/i]: The deeper we dig, the more amazing life's sophistication becomes.

Posted by: Dennis N | June 15, 2008 3:20 PM

That's called the argument from complexity, but the thing is, evolution already explains it. So that is still not a good argument.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 15, 2008 5:24 PM

nanotechnology ?

1 ) where's the paper that shows that it's nanotechnology, and not natural processes ? Can we have the reference please ?

2) and if it's nanotechnology, how did that technology get made ? By someone also made from nanotechnologies, themselves also made by someone made by ,,,natural processes ?

Posted by: God | June 15, 2008 6:27 PM

QED

Look, can we come to some sort of agreement? How about this: I won't demonstrate my ineffable and transcendent nature, and you mortals won't claim that I don't have any evident ineffable and transcendent nature.

Wait... D'oh!

Alright, forget all this "reason" crap. I will sit back and eat popcorn, and you mortals will just scream and hit each other with sticks more.

I'm real easy to please.

Posted by: Emmet Caulfield | June 16, 2008 7:32 PM

It has been my experience that the more I learn, the more ignorant I feel.

Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 16, 2008 7:39 PM

I can't claim anything more than profound ignorance. - Daniel Smith

You got that right.

I do not believe that something can came from nothing.

And of course reality has absolutely no option but to conform to your beliefs, has it?

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 16, 2008 7:49 PM

Complexity is an argument against a god, not for it.

If there is an infinite, all-powerful god, why does there need to be any complexity at all? If there were a god things would be simple because they wouldn't need to be complex. They'd work by magic.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 16, 2008 8:04 PM

I would be interested to learn about the natural processes that created DNA and the mechanisms of protein synthesis. I'd like to know how life came to be such an organized array of organic chemistry. Don't these same chemicals exist in abundance apart from life? What natural process arranged these chemicals so that they became alive? What natural process encodes DNA?

May I suggest that you spend a few hours in, at least, Wikipedia, if not a molecular biology textbook? "What natural process encodes DNA" doesn't even mean anything; please explain what you were trying to say.

I think, however that these question are unanswerable. They are unanswerable because man is trying to ascribe to unguided nature the things that God has done.

You don't think. You believe. Don't confuse that.

It's the properties of water and oxygen and carbon and the stellar processes which ultimately produced them.

These are in fact much fewer properties than you believe: the strength of electrostatic, weak and strong attraction & repulsion, the strength of gravity, the mass of the electron, the mass of the up quark, the mass of the down quark, and I think that's it.

You see, the properties of water follow directly from the properties of oxygen and hydrogen; the properties of these as well as carbon follow directly from those of the proton, neutron and electron; and the properties of the first two follow directly from those of the up quark and the down quark. It's all calculable.

requires far too many lucky coincidences to be believable.

Show us. Remember: the worst math is no math at all.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 16, 2008 8:06 PM

As for infinite regress: There is no infinite regress if the ultimate source is infinite.

You are asserting a contradiction: that an infinite is not infinite. This is nonsense.

God, being eternal, is the end of the question "What came before that?". As far as I can tell, there is only one other option, and that is, "Nothing". I do not believe that something can came from nothing.

Yet you also assert that "something" — God — came from nothing. You are contradicting yourself. Again.

Posted by: God | June 16, 2008 8:12 PM

They are unanswerable because man is trying to ascribe to unguided nature the things that God has done.

Eh, I didn't do a whole lot. I turned up when you glorified apes were starting to learn how to talk, and told you to start hitting each other with rocks. And you did! It was so funny.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 16, 2008 8:17 PM

As for infinite regress: There is no infinite regress if the ultimate source is infinite. God, being eternal, is the end of the question "What came before that?".

And what about if this thing is an eternal false bubbly vaccuum ? And the big bang, our big bang, was just a random quantum event in that false vaccuum ?
Are you happy with such a God ?

Posted by: Kel | June 16, 2008 8:41 PM

Complexity is only an argument for designer when there are no ways it would come about without the need for a designer. Take for instance the solar system and the planets within, there need not be a designer for it because it can come about by natural causes. Though a skyscraper on the other hand, there are no natural causes that can create it in nature other than through the use of design. There is a good reason that we don't see planets shaped like skyscrapers, planets form from natural causes.

It's why the blind watchmaker argument is so poor. Watches are mechanical and a good example of intelligent design. We are an organic organism that has entirely natural causes so it's not an example of intelligent design.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 17, 2008 7:45 PM

So how does man go about creating something? How does man turn raw materials into something useful?
First he extracts the materials from the earth. He then modifies them; sometimes through refining processes, often altering the chemical composition, many times creating alloys and so-called "man-made" materials (though man is not actually making anything new, he is just mixing together different ingredients). Often times dissimilar parts are bonded together through chemical reactions. Things that need to be flexible are made to give, things that need rigidity are reinforced. Where signaling is needed, conductive paths are fashioned. For logical control, CPUs are fashioned and programmed for proper reactions to external and internal conditions. Means of communication are established between systems, parts of systems, and the environment. Fuel is gathered and utilized for energy. Chemicals that will react violently are kept separated except when it is necessary to create such a reaction - then they are brought together under controlled conditions. Parts are fitted and joined together and organized into working systems. Systems are joined together and organized into larger systems until a functioning whole is obtained. Often these systems are networked together in order to communicate and coordinate with each other in order to create a community.

All these things man has been observed to do in order to turn naturally occurring elements into useful creations, yet these are precisely the same things that had to occur in order to turn naturally occurring elements into life.

God reached down and took the elements of the earth and organized them into living systems. These elements were modified and refined. Chemical compositions were changed, carbon based "alloys" were formed. Dissimilar elements were bonded together through chemical reactions. Things that need to be flexible were made to give, things that need rigidity were reinforced. Where signaling was needed, conductive paths were fashioned. For logical control, so called "instincts" were fashioned and programmed for proper reactions to external and internal conditions. Means of communication were established between systems, parts of systems, and the environment. Fuel was gathered and utilized for energy. Chemicals that react violently are kept separated except when it is necessary to create such a reaction - then they are brought together under controlled conditions. Parts are fitted and joined together and organized into working systems. Systems are joined together and organized into larger systems until a functioning whole is obtained. Often these systems are networked together in order to communicate and coordinate with each other in order to create a community. God went a step further of course (a giant leap actually) and made life self-replicating.

There are no natural processes that have ever been identified that can make a cell from non-living parts - just as there are no natural processes that can make an automobile or a computer from its constituent parts. Such things require intelligent intervention. And life requires a knowledge so far above our own it's incomprehensible. We are just beginning to scratch the surface when looking at life. It's only now - since man has entered the computer age - that he is beginning to understand the systems that God put to work inside life 4 billion years ago!

The evidence for God is all around you, just open your eyes and you'll see it. Even man's creations are evidence for God. We are, after all, fashioned in His image.

Posted by: Zarquon | June 17, 2008 8:14 PM

There are no natural processes that have ever been identified that can make a cell from non-living parts

Yes there is, you conglomerate ignoramus. It's the collection of natural chemical prcesses called "growth". Vitalism is dead

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 17, 2008 8:29 PM

I'll reiterate for the long-winded Mr Smith:

If god exists, and is all-powerful, he does not need complexity, or moving parts, or an explanation, or chemical reactions.

Why? Because he's god and he's got magic. He waves his magic wand (or his magic tentacle/noodly appendage if you're of a Cephalapod Overload or Pastafarian persuasion) and poof, things happen.

Posted by: negentropyeater | June 17, 2008 9:31 PM

But you don't know ?
God always existed, he's incredibly complex, but that we're not sure because he might actually be incredibly simple, he was of course never created by anybody as he always existed as is, he acts in mysterious ways, he can do anything, but we can't say what he does and doesn't do, he fashionned us at his image, but he doesn't really look like us...

When are the religious folks going to start saying something about this hypothetical God that actually makes some sense ?

When are the religious folks going to finally understand that, "God did it" ie "something we don't understand at all did something we don't understand at all" is not a satisfactory explanation for abiogenesis, and that we might actually find a satisfactory scientific explanation within the next decades ?

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 18, 2008 7:35 PM

Now I will respond to some of your arguments:

CJO: "What, in principle, would constitute evidence against the existence of a god?"

Evidence against God would be believable explanations for the origins of things by purely unguided, coincidental occurrences: Explanations that experts in the field could not punch holes in: Explanations that utilize processes that can be observed to work.
===================
Wowbagger: "Complexity is an argument against a god, not for it. If there is an infinite, all-powerful god, why does there need to be any complexity at all? If there were a god things would be simple because they wouldn't need to be complex. They'd work by magic."

Can't an infinite, all-powerful god do whatever it wants? Saying that such a being must conform to your specifications or it does not exist, is no argument against God at all.
=======================
David Marjanović, OM: ""What natural process encodes DNA" doesn't even mean anything; please explain what you were trying to say."

DNA is encoded. We know this because we can decode it. What natural process encodes DNA?
====================
Brownian, OM: "Some of the most convincing evidence for Brahma is in the details of life.... Some of the most convincing evidence for Unkulunkulu is in the details of life.... etc."

It doesn't matter what you call God, (although I'd suppose it might matter to Him), the evidence is still overwhelming.
=================
Owlmirror: "You are asserting a contradiction: that an infinite is not infinite. This is nonsense."

I said "There is no infinite regress if the ultimate source is infinite." I'm not saying an infinite is not infinite, I'm saying the regress is not infinite.
=================
Owlmirror: "Yet you also assert that "something" -- God -- came from nothing. You are contradicting yourself. Again."

This shows a profound misunderstanding of the concept of "eternal". How can something eternal "come from" anything?
====================
Kel: "Complexity is only an argument for designer when there are no ways it would come about without the need for a designer. Take for instance the solar system and the planets within, there need not be a designer for it because it can come about by natural causes. Though a skyscraper on the other hand, there are no natural causes that can create it in nature other than through the use of design. There is a good reason that we don't see planets shaped like skyscrapers, planets form from natural causes."

I'll ask again then, What natural processes produced DNA? Protein Synthesis? Replication? Cellular membranes? Can you name one organ for which you can show me specifically the natural processes involved in its origin? I mean a specific natural pathway that no expert in the field would dispute... can you show me that?
===================
Kel: "It's why the blind watchmaker argument is so poor. Watches are mechanical and a good example of intelligent design. We are an organic organism that has entirely natural causes so it's not an example of intelligent design."

The blind watchmaker was Richard Dawkins' argument. I think you're thinking of Paley's Watchmaker.
====================
Owlmirror: "While the exact chemical sequence is not yet known, various laboratories are doing exactly that: working on discovering the natural processes that can make a cell from non-living parts. They have made some very interesting discoveries, and it is certainly well within the bounds of possibility that they will find a natural process -- or rather, a sequence of natural processes -- that can make a living, reproducing cell. And they may well do this within your lifetime."

I can also name natural processes that could theoretically create an automobile. We've all seen the powers of wind, fire, magnetism, volcanic eruptions, etc. All it would take is the right combination of these powers and the various raw materials that make up a car and theoretically we could have a car by natural causes.
Of course this is ridiculous and nobody would actually believe such a thing, but a car is nowhere near as intricate a machine as a living cell. Yet so many can readily believe such magnificent machinery came about coincidentally.
======================
Wowbagger: "Anything complex is the result of a number of simple things thrown together, any of which are possible sans magic."

Like cars, computers, music, tables, books, boats, airplanes, etc. You're exactly right about that. I never mentioned "magic" BTW.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 18, 2008 8:55 PM

Evidence against God would be believable explanations for the origins of things by purely unguided, coincidental occurrences: Explanations that experts in the field could not punch holes in: Explanations that utilize processes that can be observed to work.

In other words, scientific theories! You're practically an atheist already!

Can't an infinite, all-powerful god do whatever it wants?

Nope. True "Omnipotence" is a meaningless concept. Not even God can do the logically contradictory.

And do you want to argue that God created everything in such a way as to make it look like it developed with no intelligent interference?

It doesn't matter what you call God, (although I'd suppose it might matter to Him), the evidence is still overwhelming.

No it isn't. If it were, there would be no atheists.

Obviously, we are underwhelmed.

I said "There is no infinite regress if the ultimate source is infinite." I'm not saying an infinite is not infinite, I'm saying the regress is not infinite.

Which means that you are contradicting yourself; an infinite being is an infinite regress.

This shows a profound misunderstanding of the concept of "eternal". How can something eternal "come from" anything?

The same way that something that doesn't exist can be eternal.

What natural processes produced DNA? Protein Synthesis? Replication? Cellular membranes?

Chemistry, of course.

Can you name one organ for which you can show me specifically the natural processes involved in its origin? I mean a specific natural pathway that no expert in the field would dispute... can you show me that?

  http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=evolution+organ

I can also name natural processes that could theoretically create an automobile.

So can I: Human beings using science and technology.

We've all seen the powers of wind, fire, magnetism, volcanic eruptions, etc. All it would take is the right combination of these powers and the various raw materials that make up a car and theoretically we could have a car by natural causes.

Yes, humans evolved naturally, and then designed cars. Thus, cars result from natural causes.

Of course this is ridiculous and nobody would actually believe such a thing, but a car is nowhere near as intricate a machine as a living cell.

Which is a complete failure to understand a critical and crucial difference between cars and cells:

Cars exist on a macroscopic scale. There are no processes, on the macroscopic scale, that can lead to cars, other than those invented by human beings.

Cells exist on a microscopic scale. There are indeed processes on that scale that can lead to cells; those processes are described in detail in the various branches of chemistry and physics.

If you actually studied the chemistry being discussed you might just possibly understand this.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 19, 2008 8:19 PM

Kel: "Now it's your turn to show me exactly what process the "magic man" undertook to create life using only evidence and scientific processes."

OK, that's fine.
First we need a realistic mechanism. I propose that the mechanism is one we see and use every day. I call it "The Intelligent Manipulation of Materials for the Purpose of Specific Function", or IMMPSF for short.
This is an observable, testable mechanism. Humans use IMMPSF all the time. Sometimes these manipulations require tools, sometimes not. Probably the simplest example of IMMPSF without tools is speech. We manipulate the air molecules around us with intelligent controls in order to produce the function of communication. (I guess you can argue that the body is a tool, that's fine). Nevertheless, we can see this mechanism, we can use this mechanism, we can devise experiments to test it. In fact, if you respond to this, you'll be manipulating the material on your keyboard - intelligently I hope - which will set off a series of reactions in machinery and technology that was itself produced by IMMPSF, until eventually the product of your IMMPSF will appear on this blog. (Wonderful ain't it?).
One of the unique aspects of this mechanism is that we can oftentimes perceive the thoughts and intentions of the manipulator simply by examining the functional product of their manipulations. We can do this because we are intelligent beings and we can identify with other intelligent beings. Of course for more advanced products a certain level of expertise is necessary.
So how was this mechanism used to create biological life? Well for one, there's no "magic" required. All that is necessary is a means to manipulate molecular structures and an extremely advanced knowledge of chemistry and physics.
Man has rudimentary skills in molecular manipulation already - so it's no stretch to postulate that a more advanced being may have perfected the process. We are also advancing rapidly in our knowledge of both chemistry and physics. Again it's no stretch to envision a more advanced being with the proficiency required to produce the cellular machinery of life. Now you might say "That's not God, that's just an advanced race or something." And you're right - to a point. If we just limit our argument to the creation of the first self replicating cellular lifeform, it's true that only "gods" (small 'g') are required. If you expand the scope however to include everything necessary for carbon based life on this planet, and the amount of forethought required to make that first lifeform thrive and evolve into all the other various lifeforms that have ever existed, well that's when the small 'g' begins to turn to a capital one.
But for now, we'll limit our discussion.
So how do we test this? One way is to simply examine the necessary components of the simplest possible cellular life and ask: Does life resemble the known products of IMMPSF? A quick study of biological textbooks and scientific papers will reveal just how deep the analogy is. Comparisons to machines, factories, communication systems, motion controllers, computers, etc. abound in such literature. These are not just superficial analogies either. Often scientists find no other way of describing such cellular processes. The other thing you can do is examine these things yourself. Does DNA resemble a computer tape? Does protein synthesis resemble an assembly line on a factory floor? Of course some of these things have no real analogy with our IMMPSF products, but that's because they are more (not less) advanced than anything we've built. The process of cell division is one we can't even imagine an analogy for yet. Maybe someday (but I doubt it).
Another thing we must do is establish a level at which IMMPSF can reasonably be established. I call this the "alien tech test": If we were exploring an alien planet with no visible remains of life, but with various objects strewn about, what level of sophistication would be required before we could deduce that these objects were the product of IMMPSF? If for instance, we found what appeared to be coded characters made out of stones, and we were able to decode the characters and figured out that they did indeed represent a form of language, would that be enough? I think it would. As you know, we've already crossed that threshold with life's DNA.
So, in conclusion, cellular life is completely consistent with other products of IMMPSF - only quite a bit more advanced. Self replication is probably the most amazing feature of life - one we take for granted. One also that represents a quantum leap in the utilization of IMMPSF.
You also said: "Organisms can be perfectly explained by natural causes, the building blocks which are perfectly natural, the process of which is perfectly natural. From the simple building blocks that can occur naturally can come more complex organisms. We can see through experiments that information can be added through replication."
First, "perfectly explained" is a level of explanation rarely obtained and I'm willing to bet you can't back that up. Second, I'll just ask one question: What natural process produced replication?

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 20, 2008 7:51 PM

"Like evolution can perfectly explain the fossil record."

But it doesn't. There's so much that remains unexplained. I don't know how you can honestly say that.

"With natural causes, we can explain how life got here."

But you can't. That's wishful thinking.

[ME]:"What natural process produced replication?"

[YOU]:"Abiogenesis."

Abiogenesis is the study of the origin of life, not the name of a specific natural process. Let me rephrase the question: "What natural mechanism produced replication?"

"I even provided links that talk about abiogenesis and how it works. Did you not read them?"

I started to but I find the talk.origins FAQs to be one-sided when dealing with creationism. They often cite only the positive aspects of research while leaving out the negative. I have not yet watched all the YouTube videos, but the one I did watch was very condescending, didn't really apply to my statements here, and didn't make anything clearer about how life came from non-life. This wikipedia article on the other hand, gives a brief synopsis of most of the basic theories of abiogenesis, giving them a very even-handed treatment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

"Here's the disparity: the only intelligence we know is one that comes from a natural product (evolution). So for a higher intelligence to be manipulating the process, it first would have had to come from evolution. So even if we had an intelligent designer, it must have come from somewhere that either evolved independently or was designed itself. And this cycle would continue infinitely."

This is pure circular reasoning; you use your conclusion as your premise. But if you want to engage in such things, I'll oblige: Life has only been observed to come from other life. No other method of origin has ever been seen. Therefore life on this planet must have come from some other form of life, and that life must have also come from life, and so on; until you either have an eternal cycle of life, or an eternal lifeform as the ultimate origin for all other lifeforms.
I like this form of reasoning!

"But the reason we don't think there was a hand in it is because the extreme unlikelihood of there being one."

Lower than the 1 in 429,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of a "self-replicating" peptide forming by the random addition of amino acids?
(from one of the articles at the talk.origins site you sent me to):
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

"A 4 billion year gradual evolution can be explained without the need for a being that can transcend time and space. We have no known mechanism which would allow a lifeform to do so. There is no evidence to suggest that a lifeform has done so."
Talk about strawmen! Where in my post did I mention any of this? The rest of your post is more of the same: setting up strawmen so you can knock them down - without responding to any of the details of my post. I answered your challenge, I gave you a plausible, testable mechanism (about which you never responded), I showed how this hypothesis could be tested - all without mentioning magic or religion. Now your response is to argue against the concept of God, mention "abiogenesis" and "evolution" in passing (as if that should end the argument), while ignoring 90% of my post!?
I'm afraid my words are falling on deaf ears here.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 21, 2008 5:06 PM

Humans use IMMPSF all the time. Sometimes these manipulations require tools, sometimes not. Probably the simplest example of IMMPSF without tools is speech. We manipulate the air molecules around us with intelligent controls in order to produce the function of communication.

This analogy is is broken because humans do not have innate knowledge of how their own intelligence works. In case you hadn't noticed, humans use speech, but have no direct knowledge of how they are doing it. For example, without some very specialized equipment, there is no way for the individual to know exactly which muscle cells and nerve cells and brain subsystems are being activated during speech.

So it necessarily follows that intelligence arises from unintelligent processes going on at a lower level.

One of the unique aspects of this mechanism is that we can oftentimes perceive the thoughts and intentions of the manipulator simply by examining the functional product of their manipulations.

Actually, the only way that we can be certain that the "functional product" was even produced by an intelligent "manipulator" is by attempting to reason out the process by which said product arrived at its current state, and evaluate the probability of said process occurring randomly versus said process being directed by an intelligence.

For example, a stone spearpoint looks like a chunk of rock, but we can examine it for the toolmarks that went into shaping it, and realize that they are not what we might expect of something undergoing randomly distributed collisions with other rocks, but rather show that it was struck many times in the same direction; that is to say, knapped. And the best explanation for the process of knapping is direct human action.

Which, once again, brings us back to the important concept of scale.

We can assess the processes of macroscopic "functional products", and often make a clear determination of whether those processes were driven by intelligence or not. Sometimes, though, it takes a while to come to a proper understanding of what those processes were (or are). The Giant's Causeway was once thought to have been created by large, intelligent, powerful beings, yet with our modern understanding of geology, we can confidently assert that the Causeway arose by unintelligent natural processes.

On the other hand, when it comes to microscopic "products", such as various types of biological cells, our best understanding of them is as chemical processes, with a great deal of randomness still existing in their operations and reactions. Our best understanding of the processes of how they came to be as they are is by inherited variation over billions of years, and our best understanding of how they first formed those many billions of years ago is by arising from simpler chemicals as well.

Ultimately, if you want to disprove the concept of chemical abiogenesis, you have to do at least one, and possibly two, very important things: First of all, you have to demonstrate, clearly and convincingly, how chemical abiogenesis could not have occurred naturally, and do so in such a way to convince those organic chemists and geochemists whose fields have been advancing for centuries, and secondly, it would make things a lot more believable if you explain how an entity that has the knowledge of how to perform the necessary chemical manipulations arose in the first place.

Which is what we've been waiting for from the "ID" institutes for years, now...

Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 22, 2008 4:39 PM

Yes I did read that. Let me point out one fallacy of this type of argument: He seems to be implying that increasing the number of trials somehow lowers the odds. This however is not the case. - Daniel Smith

Daniel, you win this Sunday's prize for moron of the week!!. Yes, you can get a free brain transplant at the private clinic of your choice, just as soon as they become technically feasible!

The "fallacy" you point out is not a fallacy. If you need 4 heads in a row, the probability you will get them if you're only allowed one shot is 1/16. However, if you are allowed two shots, and you only need to get the four heads at least once, the probability goes up to 1/16 + (15/16 x 1/16). If you have three shots, and only need to get the four heads at least once it goes up to 1/16 + (15/16 x 1/16) + (15/16 x 15/16 x 1/16)... and so on. On any single shot, the probability remains 1/16. But if you are thinking about the chance of getting at least one set of four heads, the probability goes up and up the more shots you have at it, and will get as close to certainty as you want, if you have enough tries. Exactly the same is the case if the odds in a single shot are much lower.

You "distrust these talk.origin articles" because you are an ignoramus with the mathematical know-how and ability of a turnip.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 22, 2008 9:32 PM

Nick already pointed out your failure to grasp basic probabilities, so I'll skip that.

In fact, how does natural selection explain the existence of an electrically controlled gateway in a cell?

What does this even mean? Why shouldn't there be?

Again, this goes back to basic chemistry, and basic physics.

There are only 4 fundamental forces that exist. Of these, the one that operates between atoms in molecules, binding them together, is the electromagnetic force. The best way to operate on the scale of an ion — an electrically charged atom — is going to involve something that can operate using the electric force.

Because what I've noticed is that most who tout NS as a mechanism can't explain any of the details for the origin of a specific function, they can only deal with generalities.

What I've noticed is that most who tout "ID" as a mechanism not only cannot explain any of the details for the origin of a specific function, they not only offer up the vaguest of generalities, but they end up exposing a huge amount of ignorance, and offer up contradictory and inconsistent ideas.

Oddly enough, the "Designer" doesn't seem to have any interest in explaining to any of them what exactly he did or how he did it.

Meanwhile:

  Molecular evolution of voltage-sensitive ion channel genes: on the origins of electrical excitability
  http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/10/1/221

"This analogy is is broken because humans do not have innate knowledge of how their own intelligence works."


It doesn't matter if we know how it works - only that it can be observed TO work. I'm going to hazard a guess that you can't tell me every process involved in the transference of these words from my keyboard to this blog, but we can observe that these processes work and that it takes intelligent activity for them to do so.

Um, no it doesn't. I'll grant that it took "intelligent activity" to design them and implement them in the first place, but there is no intelligence going on outside of my own brain (and your brain, although I'm somewhat skeptical about that at this point).

The whole point of automation, whether mechanical or electronic, is that it does not require intelligent intervention in order to work.

Posted by: God | June 22, 2008 10:07 PM

Oddly enough, the "Designer" doesn't seem to have any interest in explaining to any of them what exactly he did or how he did it.

If I did explain My methods, you apes would never stop throwing up. Or you would become suicidally insane.

Sometimes I manifest to someone very devout and start explaining what I did. Invariably they kill themselves because they would rather die than go on living in the body that they know what I did to cause it to come into existence.

It's pretty funny watching their tiny brains break, but I have to keep that to a minimum. I don't want you to go extinct without providing Me with plenty of entertainment.

Posted by: Kel | June 22, 2008 11:29 PM

Daniel, do you even know how to use probability? Because what you wrote there is so far from how to use it that I suggest taking a remedial statistics course to learn about it.

Also, what part of the fossil record DOES NOT fit in with evolutionary theory?

In regards to abiogenesis, we do not know the exact details in which is was built. We know the building blocks, we know how they can synthesise, we don't know the precise order. And in no way does having this knowledge affect the theory of evolution even slightly.

And I did read your post and did respond. I hate to quote myself but here.

Come on. Your analogy is mute. It's sheer speculation, mixing strawmen with the ontological argument. What can be is not what is. Reputable scientific articles, websites or books please to back this up.

Science works on the evidence, you don't. You are just trying to say that the origin of life is unlikely then offering an alternate mechanism that has 0 testing (and therefore 0 credulity) behind it. SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE! That's honestly what I want to see. Peer-reviewed evidence! Surely that isn't too hard, if you can't provide it then your argument is completely mute. Show me something in Nature, or even Scientific American. Come on! You say it's testable, show me the tests.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 23, 2008 2:30 PM

I'm not proposing some unseen, magical mechanism

So you're not proposing God at all? Then what are you arguing for?

Posted by: Rey Fox | June 23, 2008 9:44 PM

"You test my proposed mechanism every day. You tested it when you responded to my posts."

Oh brother. Are we wandering into the "Beautiful sunsets, flowers, and puppies are the proof of God's existance" territory?

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 23, 2008 11:56 PM

Are we wandering into the "Beautiful sunsets, flowers, and puppies are the proof of God's existance" territory?

I think we're stuck firmly in the territory of "It looks designed, therefore it is designed!"

You'd think at least he'd provide some methods of falsification

You're assuming far too much about his knowledge of how science works. I think "I know design when I see it!" is about as sophisticated as his thinking gets.

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 24, 2008 12:41 AM

That, or he doesn't feel that he has to be limited by atheistic definitions of evidence, because god has chosen not to show himself to our unbelieving eyes.

The logic, as far as I can untangle it, is that god can't prove himself, because proof renders faith redundant. Which seems a bit odd considering there are arguments for god's existence - apparently, if you already have faith then things that support god's existence can be considered proof.

Mindboggling, really.

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 24, 2008 1:00 AM

Kseniya,

He has been very evasive about exactly how he defines said intelligent designer. I guess it's easier to cram your god into gaps when that god remains nebulous.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 24, 2008 1:34 AM

He has been very evasive about exactly how he defines said intelligent designer.

Don't they all?

I guess it's easier to cram your god into gaps when that god remains nebulous.

Exactly.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | June 24, 2008 1:44 AM

I guess it's easier to cram your god into gaps when that god remains nebulous.

That sentiment, slightly reworded, is exactly the opposite of what all that spam I get for v1agra has led me to believe.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 24, 2008 1:51 AM

"Cram your Spam into the gap!" ™

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 24, 2008 2:06 AM

I used to live near the Big Pineapple in south-east Queensland, Australia.

The big sausage is far better!

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 24, 2008 2:44 AM

I guess a love of 'big things' is another commonality between Canada and Australia have in common. Sense of humour being the one I've noticed most - amongst English-speaking Canadians that is; I've lived with two Quebec-Canadians and neither seemed to find anything funny at all. It was hard for me since I like to think i'm reasonably amusing.

Around Australia you'll find a giant mangoes, prawns, cattle, bananas, rocking horses and probably a few more that I can't recall.

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 24, 2008 3:08 AM

Apparently you guys haven't yet mastered the art of ambiguity in social interactions.

I guess she's never spent any time in community theatre - it's a must to avoid shattering fragile egos...

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 24, 2008 11:30 PM

I've been reading all of your comments with interest. What I find most interesting is how you all say that there's no evidence for God, yet none of you can give me anything beyond generalities and evasive answers when I ask specific questions regarding the origin of life's many wondrous parts.

So I'll ask again (plus some more):

What natural processes created DNA?

What natural processes created the mechanisms of protein synthesis?

What natural process caused chemicals to become an organized array of cooperating molecular systems when these same chemicals exist in abundance apart from life and aren't observed to self-organize?

What natural process encodes DNA?

What natural processes created the mechanisms of replication?

What natural processes created the mechanisms of sexual reproduction?

What natural processes created cellular systems for the intake, storage and utilization of energy?

What natural processes created cellular communication systems?

What natural processes created cellular information processing and error correction systems?

Can you name one organ for which you can show me specifically the natural processes involved in its origin? (For this I'm asking for the precursor and the intermediate steps - with believable reasons for the selection of each)

I predict your answers will be mostly vague, "Chemistry", "Abiogenesis", "Evolution" and the like. But these are really no more specific than "the god of the gaps did it".

In fact they amount to a similar pleading: "We don't know any of the specifics for any of the systems or organs you ask about but are sure that somewhere, somehow, natural processes are more than able to produce such things."

Your case against God amounts to nothing more than circular reasoning: Does God exist? "No, God is not necessary". How do you know that? "Because natural processes are capable of producing everything we see". How did that happen? "We don't know". Then how do you know it was natural processes? "Because God doesn't exist". And around we go.

Let me remind you that my proposed mechanism, "The Intelligent Manipulation of Materials for the Purpose of Specific Function", has been observed to actually work when it comes to producing useful, organized systems, (similar in many respects to those of life), from the raw materials of the earth - materials that don't normally self-organize into useful systems.

Let me remind you also that the difficulties you are having coming up with specific answers are the same difficulties you'd encounter trying to explain how man's inventions originate by natural causes.

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 24, 2008 11:58 PM

I'll admit I would answer 'I don't know' to those questions - but that's because I'm not a biologist, a biochemist, a physicist or an information scientist.

But why should I be forced to accept that 'I don't know' must therefore default to 'Intelligent Design'?

People forgo 'God/s' as an answer because, within human history, 'God/s' was given as the answer to a lot of questions which have since turned out to have another explanation - the sun, for example.

Like I said before, if you're making the claim that there is an intelligence at work on the molecular level then I (personally) have no argument with that. I simply do not believe in god or gods as described by any existing revelatory religion.

Is that your claim? Please feel free to expand on what you mean by using the term 'Intelligent Manipulation'.

Posted by: Rey Fox | June 25, 2008 12:45 AM

"So I'll ask again (plus some more):"

Hmm. Looks like you better start hitting the books, you got a lot of questions.

"I predict your answers will be mostly vague, "Chemistry", "Abiogenesis", "Evolution" and the like. But these are really no more specific than "the god of the gaps did it"."

Sure they are. They're at least three times more specific, because we got three of them just from your paragraph alone.

"Your case against God amounts to nothing more than circular reasoning: Does God exist? "No, God is not necessary". How do you know that? "Because natural processes are capable of producing everything we see". How did that happen? "We don't know". Then how do you know it was natural processes? "Because God doesn't exist". And around we go."

I see a pretty big gap in your circle between questions 2 and 3. And anyway, we figure it was natural processes because we have no reason to think it's anything else. In other words, we know natural processes exist. Magical designers? Not so much.

"Let me remind you that my proposed mechanism, "The Intelligent Manipulation of Materials for the Purpose of Specific Function""

What mechanism? You got "It looks designed to me, therefore it must be designed!"

Posted by: God | June 25, 2008 3:03 AM

Actually, the case against God arises as a basic logical syllogism, as follows:

Well, clearly I exist, so there must be something wrong with your logic.

Aha!

It's right in the first line. You have to watch out for those overreaching premises:

1) All entities that have intelligence, awareness, and are awake and physically and mentally healthy, will directly respond to a direct request for attention and communication.

There's your problem: I am most certainly not in any way, shape or form, mentally healthy. Rather the opposite, really.

Posted by: God | June 25, 2008 1:55 PM

YHWH is omnipathic, and exhibits a full spectrum of personality disorders.

Precisely!

Vox Insana, Vox Dei.

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 25, 2008 8:42 PM

Daniel,

This is where you and I differ. While being able to accept the possibility that the universe is designed, I can't make the leap that allows that designer to be the god of the bible.

No one religion, as far as I can tell, can make a claim that makes it any more likely to be true than any other. The arguments to support one religion can be used to support another - if not all.

That, for me, is enough to dismiss them all as false.

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 25, 2008 9:32 PM

Well, there's always the possibility that it is a somewhat Abrahamic god - but only if he's a lying, disingenuous asshole and a colossal douche.

I don't know of too many of 'man's religions' who support that interpretation - though Judaism seems to be happy to allow god to be a bit of a prick if it amuses him.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 25, 2008 9:38 PM

To answer your other question:, By 'Intelligent Manipulation' I mean the physical manipulation of physical materials to accomplish a goal that was arrived at through intelligent activity. If I'm going to make a table, I'll form a plan, gather the materials, use the proper tools and products and assemble the table. Every step requires both intelligent input and the physical manipulation of materials.

When it comes to the creation of life, I envision God (my personal choice) formulating the plans for the various systems, gathering together the correct molecular ingredients and piecing them together like a master builder - only on a microscopic scale.

Except that you forget that you don't have any innate knowledge of how to build a table. Everything you know about woodworking results from your own slow and painstaking learning from others, and from your own interaction with the materials themselves. The knowledge of your teachers also arose from slow, incremental, and painstaking learning processes, passed on for generations. Indeed, learning can be seen as being evolutionary and scientific: That which does work is preserved and passed on; that which does not work is discarded. Cultural knowledge and personal knowledge has evolved, and continues to evolve, as has scientific knowledge.

Since the only model of intelligence and knowledge that we know of are evolutionary in nature, the most reasonable inference that we can come to is that if there is some transcendent entity responsible for creating our universe, then that entity must also share that same evolutionary quality, and went from ignorance to knowledge by a slow and painstaking process.

Posted by: God | June 25, 2008 10:06 PM

Actually, if I started cursing God with the accuracy and eloquence equal to the task, I would never stop.

Please, like I care. When all is said and done, you're still just the disembodied remnant of an ape with vague pretensions of grandiosity. Whereas I am the never-embodied eternal Me.

I occasionally hang out at the blasphemy competitions. Some of the former popes really know some great phrases in Vulgar Latin.

Heh.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 26, 2008 7:32 PM

Owlmirror: "How do you know? Have you even tried to study all possible ways that life on earth could have arisen from basic chemistry and physics without such intelligent input?"

No I haven't. I've looked at some of the theories, but no in depth study. There are however scores of dedicated scientists studying the problem.

"The only intelligence we know of has arisen from living beings. If the intelligence that arose from life required intelligence in the first place, then that intelligence must have required a prior intelligence. Remember, you're the one who is using the word "requires". Do you really understand the implications of phrasing things that way?"

I do. And I mean it in just the sense you're interpreting it except that I'm proposing that the ultimate source is an infinite intelligence.

"Everything you know about woodworking results from your own slow and painstaking learning from others, and from your own interaction with the materials themselves. The knowledge of your teachers also arose from slow, incremental, and painstaking learning processes, passed on for generations. Indeed, learning can be seen as being evolutionary and scientific: That which does work is preserved and passed on; that which does not work is discarded. Cultural knowledge and personal knowledge has evolved, and continues to evolve, as has scientific knowledge. Since the only model of intelligence and knowledge that we know of are evolutionary in nature, the most reasonable inference that we can come to is that if there is some transcendent entity responsible for creating our universe, then that entity must also share that same evolutionary quality, and went from ignorance to knowledge by a slow and painstaking process."

You make an interesting point. One that I cannot easily refute based on observed behavior. There are exceptions to your observations however. We are all familiar with genius kids and child prodigies who seem to be born with an innate knowledge which cannot be the result of painful, tedious learning from more advanced teachers - since they are often more advanced than any of their teachers. Also, I must wonder if our initial ignorance is largely the result of our organic bodies and their development? If so, that would lead to speculation about whether a non-organic intelligence would be subject to the same constrictions. Or would such an entity always possess the same level of intelligence?

"If the Abrahamic religions truly described the actions of an existing supernaturally intelligent God, said God would not have anything in the holy books that contradicted itself or reality. Since the bible does contradict itself, and contradicts reality, the Abrahamic religions cannot have anything to do with a putative supernaturally intelligent creator God."

That would only be true if God actually wrote the bible. In spite of the myriad claims of fundamentalists the world over, nowhere does the bible claim to have been written by God. "Inspired by God" - yes, "written by God" - no.

Posted by: God | June 26, 2008 8:21 PM

Simple statements and ideas that even a bronze-age goat herder could understand

You apes keep forgetting that I think it's funnier for groups of you to fight than for me to play teacher.

Well, except maybe for lessons in fighting.

"Hey! Don't throw those tiny pebbles at your brother!"

"Throw rocks, they'll hurt more!"

Posted by: Wowbagger | June 26, 2008 8:30 PM

Owlmirror,

Does it strike you as a coincidence that god's knowledge and understanding was suprisingly limited to exactly that of the Israelite people of the time? Surprising how he didn't seem to know too much about the contemporaneous ideas being developed by other cultures at the time - developments which he could have passed on to his 'chosen people'.

No, he was too concerned with making sure they knew about important things like how to sacrifice properly - and the dangers of wearing mixed fibers.

Posted by: Owlmirror | June 27, 2008 4:08 PM

And another analysis of the cults of the Gods Yahweh and El, before they were combined:

  http://biblicalheritage.org/God/el-goi.htm

Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 27, 2008 4:16 PM

We are all familiar with genius kids and child prodigies who seem to be born with an innate knowledge which cannot be the result of painful, tedious learning from more advanced teachers - since they are often more advanced than any of their teachers - Daniel Smith

No, we're not. We all have innate knowledge, which is of course the result of evolution by natural selection, but while some children develop complex skills unusually fast, I know of no evidence that would show anyone is born with them.

Posted by: Damian | June 27, 2008 5:36 PM

D'you know, I produced a post referencing 3 journal papers (there were many more, obviously) for each of the questions that Daniel Smith presented.

I'm afraid that I scrapped it as it was long, wouldn't have passed the filter (and may never have appeared), but most of all because Daniel can actually do what I did by himself.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 27, 2008 6:48 PM

David Marjanović, OM: ""What natural process encodes DNA" doesn't even mean anything; please explain what you were trying to say."

DNA is encoded. We know this because we can decode it. What natural process encodes DNA?

You mean the process how each sequence of three bases came to be associated with one amino acid?

I suggest to start here.

So how do we test this? One way is to simply examine the necessary components of the simplest possible cellular life and ask: Does life resemble the known products of IMMPSF?

You are arguing for a stupid designer.2

I repeat: Stupid Design.

Let's start with basics. If it was a decision to use DNA, it was a singularly stupid one. DNA falls apart when stored in water. We spend lots of energy 24/7 to keep repairing it. Why DNA and not PNA, the one with the protein backbone?

Because "everything is the way it is because it got that way".

Self replication is probably the most amazing feature of life - one we take for granted.

Do you know what DNA and RNA are chemically?

Do you know what a self-replicating ribozyme is?

Self-replication is no big deal at all. It is hardly avoidable, in fact.

"Like evolution can perfectly explain the fossil record."

But it doesn't. There's so much that remains unexplained. I don't know how you can honestly say that.

Easy: we know what you are talking about, and you don't.

(For the record, I'm working on my PhD thesis in paleobiology.)

Lower than the 1 in 429,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of a "self-replicating" peptide forming by the random addition of amino acids?

Never mind comment 495 -- self-replicating peptides don't matter, because they don't occur in organisms.

In fact, how does natural selection explain the existence of an electrically controlled gateway in a cell? Specifically.

Ion channels are already necessary for metabolism, and they are proteins that have electrical charges (which is pretty much inevitable, as you'll understand when you'll learn what a protein is chemically). So I don't see where the problem is.

What natural processes created DNA?

The same that we use today to make our DNA: reduction of RNA. That means, removal of an oxygen atom.

What natural processes created the mechanisms of protein synthesis?

RNA of certain sequences can act as a catalyst for protein synthesis. In fact, the active part of the ribosome is RNA even today.

What natural process caused chemicals to become an organized array of cooperating molecular systems when these same chemicals exist in abundance apart from life and aren't observed to self-organize?

Where did you copy that from? We no longer have an ocean and/or atmosphere full of things like hydrocyanic acid.

What natural process encodes DNA?

See above.

What natural processes created the mechanisms of replication?

See above.

What natural processes created the mechanisms of sexual reproduction?

Natural selection... how exactly that happened isn't quite clear yet, but that natural selection is capable of doing it is beyond reasonable doubt. It may have to do with forming durable cysts.

What natural processes created cellular systems for the intake, storage and utilization of energy?

Those arose long before cells. We are talking about really simple redox reactions here.

What natural processes created cellular communication systems?

Natural selection. Do you even know how quorum sensing works?

What natural processes created cellular information processing and error correction systems?

Mutation and natural selection.

Can you name one organ for which you can show me specifically the natural processes involved in its origin? (For this I'm asking for the precursor and the intermediate steps - with believable reasons for the selection of each)

Lung --> swim bladder. Function: breathing --> breathing and buoyancy --> buoyancy.

Man, that was easy. :-)

With life however, the opposite is happening. Years ago, scientists believed cells to be simple blobs of protoplasm, but the deeper we look, the more complex cellular life appears to be.

1) "Years"? Two hundred years.
2) Why are α-tubulin and β-tubulin so similar to each other and to FtsZ, why do FtsZ and β-tubulin have GTPase activity while α-tubulin has an inbuilt GTP that just sits there and does nothing, yet still costs energy to make and insert?

I'm basically making two claims here:

If you were wrong, how would you know?

Be careful with this question. This question is what science is. As soon as you can't answer it, you aren't doing science.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 30, 2008 11:18 AM

David Marjanović: "Lung --> swim bladder. Function: breathing --> breathing and buoyancy --> buoyancy. Man, that was easy. :-)"

Reading through various papers on the subject of lung evolution, I can see that I'm fighting a losing battle here. It is becoming obvious to me that any functioning system can be deemed "advantageous" and therefore imagined to have been selected. How can one argue with that?

Posted by: Daniel Smith | June 30, 2008 11:36 AM

David Marjanović,
You make these things sound so easy, yet we both know they're not. Perhaps it's due to your current immersion in the theoretical aspects, I don't know. But if you think PNA is better than DNA, why not devise an experiment to make a living PNA based organism. Shouldn't be hard - right?

Posted by: Kseniya | June 30, 2008 12:17 PM

How can one argue with that?

Blindly?

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 1, 2008 12:00 PM

Owlmirror: "Come up with a testable way to show how said system could have arisen without being selected."

But I've already done that. Humans, using IMMPSF, with the proper tools and sufficient knowledge, could conceivably (with enough practice) manipulate molecules in such a way that they could design such systems. This is testable.

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 1, 2008 1:57 PM

But I've already done that. Humans, using IMMPSF, with the proper tools and sufficient knowledge, could conceivably (with enough practice) manipulate molecules in such a way that they could design such systems. This is testable.

Um. It is testable that humans could learn how to do highly advanced genetic engineering and such, and modify various biological systems in various ways.

However, that is not a testable way to determine that only an intelligence could have brought about the obvious changes that we see occurred in biological systems long before humans evolved, let alone before humans learned what genes and molecues were and how to manipulate them.

Or to put it another way: Just because humans can now manufacture diamonds does not mean that all diamonds that existed before the manufacturing process was discovered were not the natural result of heat and pressure in the bowels of the earth over millions of years.

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 1, 2008 7:37 PM

Moving the goalposts a bit aren't we?

No.

Unless you come up with testable evidence that intelligent beings can travel through time, you're stuck with the fact that humans have only learned that such genetic manipulations as you propose have only become possible in the past few decades. Future genetic engineering? Sure. Past genetic engineering? Not so much.

Actually, I think the test for time travel already exists out there: Find a Cambrian rabbit (or gerbil, or hamster, or mouse, or cat), and you're set.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 2, 2008 1:00 PM

Nick Gotts: "There are innumerable examples of features of organisms that no intelligent designer would ever design in, because they are so obviously sub-optimal."

So any sub-optimal system is evidence against an intelligent designer?

You must be a Mac user!

Owlmirror: "Testable how? If you were wrong, how would you know?"

We, being intelligent agents, can test the mechanism ourselves or observe others and verify that it is possible for an intelligent agent with our level of knowledge and expertise (or greater) to accomplish the task. In fact we are doing just that:
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/environment/2005/02/21/nanotechno.html

If I were wrong, you and everyone else here would be able to show me so experimentally.

Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 2, 2008 1:50 PM

So any sub-optimal system is evidence against an intelligent designer? - Daniel Smith

Yes. If you really class the people who design Windows software as intelligent, I'd say there's no hope for you.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 7, 2008 7:12 PM

Owlmirror,

To be fair, a diamond is not life. Man can make diamonds - and so can nature. Man can make rock formations - and so can nature. Man can make a lake - and so can nature. Man can make a computer - but nature can't. Why can't nature make a computer? Is it the ingredients? It can't be. Everything in a computer came from the earth at some point, so it's not like a computer is "unnatural" in its composition. Is nature impotent? No, that's not it either, every process necessary to construct a computer has analogs in nature: fire, wind, pressure, cold, they're all there. So why exactly can't nature make a computer? I submit to you that it's because the forces of nature are incapable of organizing raw materials for function. We know from observation that the processes necessary to make a functioning computer are beyond the organizational capabilities of nature. It's the same with life. No one has ever witnessed nature organizing molecules for function (except within living things). It just doesn't happen.

Posted by: Ichthyic | July 7, 2008 7:21 PM

It's the same with life.

no, it's not.

a mousetrap is not a cell, which is exactly where Behe fails as well (aside from the fact that even a mousetrap is entirely reducible).

your analogy fails at such a basic level, it's entirely laughable.

"This is your brain on religion"

any questions?

Posted by: Wowbagger | July 7, 2008 7:24 PM

Daniel Smith wrote:

Man can make a computer - but nature can't.

I think the squishy pink-and-grey thing floating inside your skull might beg to differ. Ask an IT person to explain to you the memory and processing power a man-made analog of the human brain would require.

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 7, 2008 7:33 PM

I submit to you that it's because the forces of nature are incapable of organizing raw materials for function. We know from observation that the processes necessary to make a functioning computer are beyond the organizational capabilities of nature. It's the same with life. No one has ever witnessed nature organizing molecules for function (except within living things). It just doesn't happen.

Actually, it has. That's kinda what research in the chemical origins of life has done, and it's why I, and others who actually follow the science, are optimistic that research into organic chemistry will discover the path or paths by which organic chemicals become metabolizing replicators.

You might want to read up on current research into complex organic chemistry.

Hey, here's one nice very recent summary of current origins-of-life-research:

  http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/07/what-critics-of.html

You keep making these analogies to human artifacts. I already explained above why these analogies are wrong: You're trying to compare things that are on the human scale — on the order of 1 cm in size or larger — with things on the molecular scale. Organic chemicals can behave very differently from what you're used to.

Maybe the problem is that you just can't see it. OK, try this:

  http://exploringorigins.org/protocell.html

There's probably more I could point at... let me dig up some more links.

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 7, 2008 7:35 PM

And here's a recent video:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg

And here's the website of the researcher that the above video summarizes:

  http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 7, 2008 8:01 PM

Nick Gotts,

If you want to claim that a design is "sub-optimal" you must first know the goal of the designer. Case in point: Would you consider half worn-out blue jeans to be an "optimal" or "sub-optimal" design? When it comes to durability, obviously the design is sub-optimal, but that's not what the designers were going for. Their goal was sales, not durability, and for that (only God knows why), they succeeded. Human designs are notorious for purposeful sub-optimality - and for many reasons: economics, laziness, poor quality control, greed (as in "if it breaks we can sell more spare parts!"). None of these disqualify the product as having originated via intelligent design.

Now, as for life, I'm postulating that the designer is the Christian God (just to be clear), but even then I don't know what this designer's goal was. Perhaps only the first lifeform was perfect. Perhaps it was designed to evolve into the myriads and myriads of organisms that would fill the world, complementing each other and maintaining a balance throughout all the various climatic and environmental upheavals the earth has gone through. If that was His goal, then I'd say He succeeded, and that the few sub-optimal features you describe are no argument against a superb original design.

Or perhaps the designer had other things in mind. Perhaps, like our own designers, He decided to make designs with flaws in them. Maybe there's a reason for that? Maybe it's part of the biblical curse? Maybe it's to teach us of our own mortality?

I don't know. What I do know is that you can't claim that a sub-optimal design is an argument against an omniscient and omnipotent designer unless you know what that designer's goals were.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 7, 2008 8:10 PM

I have to laugh that so many of you cite the features of life as evidence of what nature can do, while the origin of said life is the very thing we are debating!

I guess you can never lose an argument when you assume your conclusion!

Posted by: Ichthyic | July 7, 2008 8:15 PM

I think the squishy pink-and-grey thing floating inside your skull might beg to differ

are you sure you want to use Daniel to make that point?

well, Ok, I guess it's not like we're talking about "computing power" exactly.

Aha! Even more proof of who was really behind the computer - my favorite science teacher/goddess/superhero:

holy crap! I haven't seen that since I was a wee lad! the nostalgia is killing me.

Where on earth did someone manage to find a vid of it to put up on youtube, I wonder?

Posted by: Ichthyic | July 7, 2008 8:17 PM

holy crap!

at the time known as:

"SHAZAM!"

;)

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 7, 2008 8:18 PM

Wowbagger,
Your argument makes sense if this life is all there is. We are talking about an eternal God however - one who has made provision for an unending life for us, free from suffering. In the light of eternity, the pains of this world will be long forgotten.
You also forget that there is a devil and that there are evil people in this world. God is not the only moral agent in the universe and he is not the only one who influences human life.

Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 7, 2008 8:19 PM

Daniel,

Now you've finally admitted your religious presuppositions, I'm afraid your position collapses immediately. Of the three statements:

God is good.
God is omnipotent.
There is suffering in the world.

Only two can be true.

We know there is suffering in the world, therefore either God does not exist, God is not good, or God is not omnipotent. Your hypothesis is not only falsifiable, and therefore within the purview of science, it is conclusively falsified.

Posted by: Wowbagger | July 7, 2008 8:24 PM

Daniel,

So, you're saying the devil causes birth defects and degenerative diseases? That's an interesting theory.

Unfortunately, the same Christian god is said to have created the universe and everything in it - including the aforemention red, bearded fellow with a penchant for pitchforks. If that is the case, then that god is still responsible for the evil that the fallen Morningstar causes, and is therefore falling very short in one or all of 'just', 'kind', 'benevolent' and 'loving'.

Or is he not all-powerful? Be careful; you're getting awfully close to heresy here.

Posted by: God | July 7, 2008 8:27 PM

Except that I really am God's sockpuppet. Seriously, I am.

Really, he is.

What part of Me being singular and unique do you mortals not understand?

Posted by: Kel | July 7, 2008 8:47 PM

Yep, after all that talk that his argument wasn't "magic man dun it", he eventually pulled out the "magic man dun it". Nevermind he hasn't provided a mechanism for how "magic man dun it", or any evidence that there even is a "magic man" who dun it, it's just another creotard making a meek attempt to justify his faith in an unfavourable presupposition; one that normally would require an extraordinary amount of evidence to be accepted.

Posted by: CJO | July 7, 2008 9:06 PM

Perhaps only the first lifeform was perfect. Perhaps it was designed to evolve into the myriads and myriads of organisms that would fill the world, complementing each other and maintaining a balance throughout all the various climatic and environmental upheavals the earth has gone through. If that was His goal, then I'd say He succeeded, and that the few sub-optimal features you describe are no argument against a superb original design.

Right on. Stick with this, then. Study up on what we've found out about the consequences of "organisms [trying to] fill the world" in diverse, limiting environments (and, incidentally, learn why your "balance" is an over-simplification at best), and you're a Theistic Evolutionist.

I have to laugh that so many of you cite the features of life as evidence of what nature can do, while the origin of said life is the very thing we are debating!

I said nothing about the origin of life. A computer was formed in the process of your development, which did not require any non- or super-natural input. Parsimony should not be mistaken for question-begging. You, on the other hand, introduce and assume the influence of agents for which you cannot provide any evidence beyond the contents of a book.

Posted by: God | July 7, 2008 9:16 PM

Priest: Oh heavens no. He's not always good but he's always right.

Because might makes right. I'm the Almighty, so I'm the Alrighty.

Posted by: JOVE, KING OF THE GODS | July 7, 2008 9:26 PM

WHO is this upstart with ONE measly son - and apparently only ONE experience of the divine PASSION (Mary tells me he was bloody useless, by the way, as you might expect for a first-timer) - calling himself the ALMIGHTY? Spends his time skulking in a chest of shitty wood covered in badger skins, by ME, while I'm surveying Olympus from my throne, enjoying another gallon of nectar and a bevy of fresh young things of both sexes! Pah! Call yourself a GOD?

Posted by: God | July 7, 2008 9:41 PM

PS: Jove is also My sockpuppet.

For that matter, so are Ba'al, the Jade Emperor, Zeus, Mars, Ra, Osiris, Zuul, Huitzilopochtli, Odin, Thor — every God and every Devil of every pantheon, pretty much. They're all just... Me.

Posted by: Ichthyic | July 7, 2008 9:44 PM

They're all just... Me.

so...

if we kill YOU, we get rid of the source for all deism, all at once?

very tempting.

what was your address again?

Posted by: Jesus, called Christ | July 7, 2008 9:52 PM

God might not be all-knowing or all-powerful, and sure isn't all-good, but I'm willing to grant him all-scenery-chewing...

if we kill YOU, we get rid of the source for all deism, all at once?


very tempting.


what was your address again?

Eh, people have been wanting to off the big spook for thousands of years. He just smirks.

You want to ice him permanently? Figure out what he's made of and how to damage it, and be our guest.

Posted by: Gozer the Destructor | July 7, 2008 10:05 PM

I ATE My own father, you puny sniveling soft effete Roman tosser of pathetic lightning bolts! You call yourself a God!? I will flatten your throne (which, you note, I know how to spell correctly), and destroy your entire pantheon!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Posted by: Satan | July 8, 2008 10:50 AM

Say, Gozer, speaking of "soft", wasn't your most recent earthly incarnation in the form of a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man?

Maybe Zuul could incarnate as a giant graham cracker man, and Huitzilopochtli could join in as a giant chocolate man, and then Jove could zap you all and give the world the biggest S'more ever.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 8, 2008 12:03 PM

Kel: "Yep, after all that talk that his argument wasn't "magic man dun it", he eventually pulled out the "magic man dun it". Nevermind he hasn't provided a mechanism for how "magic man dun it", or any evidence that there even is a "magic man" who dun it, it's just another creotard making a meek attempt to justify his faith in an unfavourable presupposition; one that normally would require an extraordinary amount of evidence to be accepted."

I provided a non-magical testable mechanism. Your post shows a willingness to completely ignore everything I've said here in favor of a strawman you've apparently invented just for that purpose.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 8, 2008 12:22 PM

Human designs are notorious for purposeful sub-optimality - and for many reasons: economics, laziness, poor quality control, greed (as in "if it breaks we can sell more spare parts!

And does human suboptimality happen to match what would be expected from the constraints of nearly strict vertical information transmission plus mutation and natural selection (and other processes)? Because those are the constraints vertebrate suboptimality observes.

The problems of vertebrate suboptimality aren't design problems, i.e., incompetent engineers, sloppiness, and planned obsolescence. If they were, we'd--prepare to be amazed--actually consider a design explanation for vertebrate suboptimality.

Organisms have a very peculiar suboptimality, which is eminently explainable via evolution, and it is right outside of any known design parameters. Your task is to predict and explain what evolution does, such as the fact that all vertebrate wings are modified forelimbs of the recent ancestors of archaeopteryx, early pterosaurs, and early bats.

We understand human suboptimal design. Archaeopteryx has suboptimal design, all right, but only because all of its parts happen to be modifications of terrestrial dinosaur organs and systems.

Even an extremely sloppy tinkerer does not observe the constraints of heredity when he borrows from previous designs. With few (explained) exceptions, vertebrate evolution always observes the constraints of heredity. Hence descent with modification explains the suboptimal "design" of archaeopteryx.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Posted by: Koshchei the Deathless | July 8, 2008 5:31 PM

Speaking merely as an observer of lesser entities, I'm afraid that you're disqualified, Gozer. Despite your implicit insistence that you are a thousands-year-old Sumerian God, you, and your demigod servant Zuul, were in fact invented in the past couple of decades for a piece of fictional entertainment. While invention for fiction is not itself a problem, the extremely young age is. To put it bluntly: If there is no century-plus archaeological record of you, you don't count at all. If you had actual followers, an exception might be made, but again, nothing there either.

Now, Jove, I afraid that you lose as well. While your mythology is still around, no-one takes it seriously. Indeed, you were not taken seriously 20 centuries ago, when one of your own priests (Marcus Tullius Cicero) spoke disparagingly of you. No, I'm afraid that the God that you're attacking, Yahweh or YHWH, has long since outgrown his primitive Canaanite past, and the revamped mythology of his tri-partate self (which includes creativity and awe, anger and punishment, and forgiveness and mercy, all in one beautifully insane package), his son/self Jesus, his mother/wife Mary, and his child/rival Satan, has, as they say among the marketers, "eaten your lunch" and converted your former followers.

Jove, I understand that you may have a small comeback with some pagans, in which case, please register your reinstatement with the Æternum at some point in the next few æons. Good luck with that project.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 8, 2008 7:19 PM

Nick Gotts: "God is good. God is omnipotent. There is suffering in the world. Only two can be true."

Define "good".

Posted by: Dennis N | July 8, 2008 7:39 PM

Being good means you do what you can to prevent suffering in others. As an example, torturing and tormenting someone for eternity would be the opposite of good.

Posted by: Dennis N | July 8, 2008 8:07 PM

We would only be able to tell they were artifacts if these aliens thought similar to us. We would be applying a subjective human perception on the items. How could we objectively tell what is designed and what is not, without comparing it to our human standards?

Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 8, 2008 8:31 PM

We would only be able to tell they were artifacts if these aliens thought similar to us.

Even more tellingly, these (inaudible) always assume in the "analogy" that we'd be inferring that the artifacts were made via intelligence, and not that the aliens themselves were.

Why? Does life somehow appear to be different from artifacts? Of course it does, it looks evolved (or does until massive engineering takes place), and it looks quite unlike what we make. Or as I wrote above, the suboptimal design itself is very different in life from suboptimal design in our machines and other artifacts.

Smith even admits this, but he wants to claim the analogy with our machines, while also claiming that life is just "advanced design", which is why it is so disanalogous with known design. Which has to be, and is, taken solely by faith, and without any evidence whatsoever.

The fact remains that life just happens to look evolved. It does not look designed, and both Dembski have to resort to claiming that the (linguistic) default where something cannot be explained by "natural means" is not the "miracle", but "design". That's after they have effectively eliminated design as the answer to life's origin, for of course they avoid all of the evidence of design (evident purpose, rationality behind the anatomy and physiology, and the lack of evolutionary evidence for the supposed "design").

Design is the last thing they'd really want to find (not that they could), since that would imply the limitations of "mortal beings". They want to claim that life is miraculous, but because of legal reasons they have to call the miracle "design".

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 8, 2008 9:50 PM

I have provided a mechanism that is at least as testable as any you can propose - probably more so.

You proposed a mechanism that is not testable for that which has happened in the past, and for that matter, which is not testable for most current living things.

I still stand by my analogy that that's like offering modern diamond synthesis as a "testable mechanism" for how all diamonds that there are exist.

My mechanism is observed--taking simple raw earthly elements and turning them into complex functioning systems--every day. What mechanism can you propose that can do that?

Biology.

Where is it observed to work?

In all living organisms (all single- or multi-celled organisms that metabolize and reproduce).

How is it tested?

By observation through microscopes; by dyes and stains that bind to particular proteins; by genetically engineering the organisms to express fluorescent proteins along with the protein they usually express; by the analysis of the chemical constituents of cells, by deliberately adding various chemicals which are known to modify how cells work and interact and develop (and probably other methods as well).

In addition, because biological reproduction is not always exact, and because the developmental process in multi-celled organisms is fairly robust, it is possible for organisms to have slight differences in how they reproduce (and develop), and still get a viable, but now modified, organism. Thus, all biology, but perhaps especially the developmental part, supports how evolution can work: slight changes that are inherited can accumulate, over time, to result in an organism that is very different from its parents, yet functions as well or better, depending on the environment that the various generations were exposed to.

There's more to it than that, but that's one way of expressing some of the basics.

Did you follow any of the links that I posted, by the way?

How would you know if you are wrong?

By finding some evidence that shows that life actually works by magic.

Or by finding that there is a completely intractable problem with the current, evidence-based body of knowledge about how genes form proteins that interact in complex chemical networks to form different tissue types and body patternings. Some demonstration that the chemistry can't work, or that the genetics can't work. Something that conflicts with the current body of evidence.

Why do you ask? What have you got?

Posted by: Nick Gotts | July 9, 2008 12:16 PM

Daniel Smith@635. And your point is?

Posted by: Satan | July 9, 2008 3:53 PM

Similarly, "evil" can only be understood as "weakness". All you humans are weak in comparison to Me, so I get to call you evil.

Evil, be thou my good!

Gotta love the classics.

Say, maybe you're My sockpuppet.

Posted by: God | July 9, 2008 3:58 PM

Say, maybe you're My sockpuppet.

Mm, nope, sorry. In My mythos, you're the later creation, and therefore are weaker and lesser. Therefore, you are My evil sockpuppet.

Posted by: Jesus of Hackensack | July 9, 2008 4:03 PM

Sockpuppet? Popsucket, more likely.

Posted by: Shakespeare | July 9, 2008 4:48 PM

It's good to see the gods bickering in my playground, where my powers rule them all.

GOZER: RAWR!

SATAN: I cannot help but be defiant! It's how I was fashioned.

GOD: 'Tis true, 'tis true. 'Twas for the greater glory of Me.

JOVE: Bound up in baked dough mumbled over by a man? I never heard such nonsense!

ZEUS: I am he, and he is me, and thee is he. And so too all of ye.

JESUS: O God, thou art psychotic!

Exeunt Omnes Deorum, pursued by a Beare BOFH

Posted by: Hypnos | July 9, 2008 5:11 PM

Will you guys please shut up? Some of us are trying to get some sleep here!

Yeah, tell me about it.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 9, 2008 8:08 PM

Dennis N: "We would only be able to tell they were artifacts if these aliens thought similar to us. We would be applying a subjective human perception on the items. How could we objectively tell what is designed and what is not, without comparing it to our human standards?"

Kseniya: "But we have no reason to assume - nor the means to deduce - that biological life is, or even may be, such an artifact. That's where your entire premise falls over."

I agree with both of these posts - to a point. It is true that our only reference for ID is our own designs. It is true also that that we would use analogous qualities of otherworldly artifacts to our own designs as a method to determine their intelligent design. Thirdly, it is true that *IF* biological life does not share such analogous qualities with our known designs, then my case has no merit.

I would argue that, A) no matter how differently an alien race might think, we would probably very easily determine the design of their artifacts based on analogies to our own designs including simple factors such as organization and function; B) biological life shares many qualities with man's designs; and C) analogies to man's designs are *increasing* the more we learn about life. This is evidenced by a simple search of teleological and engineering terms in biological literature as Mike Gene has outlined in his book "The Design Matrix".

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 9, 2008 8:31 PM

I agree that the creation of life on this planet must have involved extensive knowledge of "living organisms and how they interact with their environment". But I thought you favored a natural mechanism?

What part of biology is not a natural mechanism?

How do you know?

How would you know if you were wrong?

Posted by: Loki | July 9, 2008 9:02 PM

Will you guys please shut up? Some of us are trying to get some sleep here!

Don't you have some clerics to attend to?

man, if I had a hammer...

Oh, Thor. Everyone knows that you sleep with your... hammer in your hand.

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 10, 2008 2:27 PM

If I found another definition that said biology was a natural mechanism used in the formation of life.

A pity your pathetic semantic failure did not inspire you to check, oh, I don't know, maybe bloody dictionary.com for additional definitions?

  http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=biology

1. the science of life or living matter in all its forms and phenomena, esp. with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.
2. the living organisms of a region: the biology of Pennsylvania.
3. the biological phenomena characteristic of an organism or a group of organisms: the biology of a worm.

Sheesh.

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 10, 2008 10:02 PM

Please explain how you think "biology" - the biological phenomena characteristic of a PREBIOTIC world - formed life from non-life.

Sigh. That wasn't what you originally asked. And if you want me to change my answer, you should know by now what it's going to be:

Biology AND organic chemistry

Because when biology is analyzed at its most basic level, it turns out to just be organic chemistry. DNA is an organic compound. So is RNA, and the proteins produced by RNA, and nearly all of the chemicals involved in metabolism. And the chemicals that aren't organic chemicals are inorganic chemicals, or they're ions, which are just electrically charged elements.

It's all chemistry.

Have you followed any of the links that I posted, which expand on this in greater technical detail? How about the youtube video, at least?

Like the genetic "code"? Can you point me to a description of this "code" (sorry for the "sloppy language") and its functions which uses no teleological or engineering terms?

Assuming I did so, why would it matter one way or another?

The point is that language is just language. What does that have to do with evidence that any aspect of biology actually is in some way not "natural"?

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 12, 2008 2:54 AM

Getting from fatty acid vesicles to the first actual cell is quite a leap - with lots of unexplainable gaps.

Sigh. I knew you would do that.

We have the basic organic chemicals on the one hand, and the organic chemicals on the other, and you complain about "gaps". Which are, by the way, not "unexplainable", but rather "unexplained". Big difference, there, in a few letters.

Hey, how about God's unexplainable failure to leave any evidence of his existence? How about God's unexplainable failure to even ever communicate?

Sheesh.

I have an observation: They say that these vesicles break up and that each piece loses nothing in the process. This is before these vesicles begin to take on polymers however. Once they take on polymers and break up, there's no reason to believe that each piece will have identical polymers (if they have any)

There's no reason to believe that there will be none at all with very similar polymers, either.

so each piece will be different. Consequently it's no longer true "replication" is it?

Perhaps, but remember, no replication is true replication.

Even human reproduction and development has a certain degree of variation that just happens as part of the process.

Which reminds me:

  http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/basics_how_can_chromosome_numb.php

Also, if this fatty acid vesicle process happens so readily around hydrothermal vents, why isn't life spontaneously forming all over the world?

Sigh.

In all places where life might have arise, life has already arisen. And all of these organic molecules are nummy tasty food that bacteria — already existing life — want to eat.

But then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are indeed places where life is forming, and we just haven't found those places yet. Hm. Say, maybe some of that "scientific research" stuff might help...

Posted by: God | July 12, 2008 1:18 PM

He's communicated to us through Moses, the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, etc.

If you pay careful attention, you'll note that I told all of them different things at different times.

I love conflict!

Posted by: Jesus, called Christ | July 12, 2008 1:42 PM

Oh, look. He's at it again.

Look, kid, after you die, you'll find out how much God has lied to humans. It took me a long time to realize it, but when you can actually talk to all of the dead religious leaders and compilers of scripture and such, it becomes very clear.

God is a lying asshole.

PS: You should be aware that you're "desecrating" the Sabbath, by the way. Although you should also be aware that the Sabbath isn't sacred in the first place, just like I am not the son of God.

Posted by: Satan | July 12, 2008 1:50 PM

I'm an assholy.

So people could also address You as "Your Assholiness"?

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 12, 2008 2:36 PM

"Hey, how about God's unexplainable failure to leave any evidence of his existence?"

He left evidence everywhere - you are evidence. His "artifacts" surround us.

No he didn't, no I'm not, and no they don't.

Look, we've been over this already. In order to show that life, and indeed, everything else in this universe, arose from some prior intelligence, you have to prove that life, and everything else in the universe, could not have arisen from the interaction of natural laws.

And yet, from all of the evidence that we have been able to analyze so far, life, and everything else in the universe, did in fact arise from the interaction of natural laws.

What part of that do you fail to understand?

Posted by: Joseph Smith | July 13, 2008 5:15 AM

"He's communicated to us through Moses, the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, etc."

Don't forget Joseph Smith.
^_^

Posted by: Daniel Smith | July 13, 2008 3:00 PM

Owlmirror: "And yet, from all of the evidence that we have been able to analyze so far, life, and everything else in the universe, did in fact arise from the interaction of natural laws. What part of that do you fail to understand?"

That's funny. You whole heartedly believe this, but when pressed for exactly which natural forces cause simple chemicals to self-organize into complex machinery, all you can come up with are the generic "biology", "chemistry" and "abiogenesis".

I, on the other hand, have shown you a proven, tested mechanism that can be regularly observed organizing simple materials into complex machinery - and you find every reason to reject it. So what we have here is an unknown mechanism you'll unquestioningly accept because it does not suggest the possibility of God, while a proven mechanism you'll unflinchingly reject because it does.

Posted by: Kseniya | July 13, 2008 3:49 PM

Daniel, the commenter who is assuming his conclusion - and who therefore filters ALL his arguments through that assumption - is you.

You fail to acknowledge the fact that a great many biologists who accept the theory of evolution also happen to be theists. No matter what you think of the arguments made here by Owlmirror and others, that simple, undeniable fact will remain. Therefore, this nonsense about biologists rejecting the design inference and accepting evolution BECAUSE it doesn't demand God is just that - nonsense. Utter nonsense. If you could look past your nose, beyond your pet hypothesis, you'd see that.

Submit your "proven, tested mechanism that can be regularly observed organizing simple materials into complex machinery" to the scrutiny of, say, Kenneth Miller, and see what he has to say about it. While you're at it, be sure to accuse him of rejecting God. Be sure to let us know how that goes.

Evolution ≠ Atheism

Write that down, so you don't forget.

Furthermore, not only is a mousetrap not a cell, it's not even analagous to a cell. It seem that you fail to grasp (or decline to accept, for it does not demand that your God exists!) that biological solutions appear designed because they have evolved, sometimes in inefficient, sometimes clumsy, sometimes inexplicable ways - just as we have come to expect an evolved solutions to manifest themselves - to solve a problem or to provide an advantage for an organism. Because of this, we can take a design stance towards evolved biology, and speak of a feature as being "designed" to perform some function for the organism, without the necessity, to assume a designer or a "design" mechanism.

This thought is incomplete, but I gotta run. Sorry.