Pharyngula

Posted by: Shawn Wilkinson | March 4, 2010 11:33 PM

So god acts on the quantum level? Is he the hidden variables Boym or does he actively change the wavefunction of the particles by constantly observing them?

I demand quantum miracles now. Perhaps I should begin praying to the statue of St. Albert the Great.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 4, 2010 11:37 PM

Remind me, next time I'm asked about Ken Miller, that I shouldn't bother to say anything appreciative.

But Miller is J*hn Kw*k's buddy. You're undermining all that Kw*k stands for by not appreciating Miller.

Posted by: Zombified | March 4, 2010 11:41 PM

As a former physics student, I fucking hate that kind of abuse of quantum mechanics.

(How much? I finally registered with MT to comment. :P)

Posted by: Kome | March 4, 2010 11:53 PM

PZ Myers
"Saying he was a member of NKotB would be far too flattering."

But how often do you get the chance to sing a New Kids' tune into the phone as a polite way to say "Fuck off"?

Posted by: James F | March 5, 2010 12:02 AM

Miller wants to turn the pro-evolution movement into a stalking horse for Catholicism, while his godless colleagues have repeatedly stated that we want no endorsement of religion or atheism in science education.

Wait, what? When has Ken Miller used pro-evolution advocacy to specifically promote Catholicism, or introduce religion into the science curriculum?

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 5, 2010 12:11 AM

Hmm, before a couple of days ago I'd have simply agreed with your unhappiness about this on principle; now, having experienced what having your words taken out of context and used against you feels like first-hand (thank you for that, pissant Intersection twerps), I'm far more understanding.

Posted by: Bored Wombat | March 5, 2010 12:23 AM

A few fanboi words in defense of Ken:

When Ken takes on creationists in Public debates, he comes prepared with a knowledge of their arguments, as well as a knowledge of the science.

Most scientists only have the latter, and are reduced to wondering what the heck the creationist is on about.

Ken kicks arse and takes names in that forum, and at least with respect to a current US audience, he's all the more effective for being a christian.

And I guess you all know that, and I respect the intellectual honestly of not letting him get away with talking carp just because he's doing good as well.

But he's also filling a void there. Dawkins doesn't debate creationists, because he feels it lends them undue credibility. And for all Peasey's eloquence and intelligence, he will only be commanding in a debate once his voice breaks, and in terms of being up with the creationists arguments, Ken is the better of the two.

Posted by: Shawn Wilkinson | March 5, 2010 12:32 AM

@15:

The answer was much easier back in the Bronze Age. You don't believe in God? Well, do you believe in the edge of my sword?

Now that we live in an era of human intellect where it takes more than the threat of violence or the wielding of power to convince people of ones correctness, we have the whole slew of cognitive dissonance exhibited by people. God is in this gap. Oh shit, that gap doesn't exist? Well, he's actually here. Shit, stop filling gaps! It is obvious that God was never in a gap but can simply never be found.

What we're dealing is a religion whose origins were founded during an era of "it is obvious that gods exist" attempting to remain in an era when the obvious isn't so anymore.

Posted by: YamaZaru | March 5, 2010 1:24 AM

Gotta love the journalistic quote-mining that they used on PZ. Why, it almost makes me think that "the creationists and [journalists] are in an odd sort of symbiosis -- reinforcing each others' [propensity to obscure facts via sneaky bullshit tactics]."

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | March 5, 2010 1:34 AM

Bored Wombat @ 18:

Ken kicks arse and takes names in that forum, and at least with respect to a current US audience, he's all the more effective for being a christian.

Really? So it's okay for him to spew utter nonsense such as this?:

This sort of sly intervention, he argues, is vital to the Creator's project: if God were to re-grow limbs for amputees, for instance -- if God were to perform the sort of miracles demanded by atheists as proof of his existence -- the consequences would be disastrous. "Suppose that it was common knowledge that if you were a righteous person and of great faith and prayed deeply, all of a sudden, your limb would grow back," he says. "That would reduce God to a kind of supranatural force . . . and by pushing the button labeled 'prayer,' you could accomplish anything you wanted. What would that do to moral independence?"

Bullshit to your fanboi take. He's doing harm, just as all religious people do, by doing everything he can to keep people mentally tied to a construct which allows people to justify their pettiness, nastiness and evils towards others.

Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 5, 2010 1:52 AM

From smiting the Egyptians to hiding in a misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. How art Thou fallen, O Light-bringer!

Posted by: surprises aplenty | March 5, 2010 2:08 AM

If PZ was selectively quoted, is it not possible that Miller was, too? I understand that Miller has been in the biz for a long time and the quotes may well be a good representation of what he wanted to say, but if PZ is unhappy with the way he was quoted, Miller should be given some benefit of the doubt.

Posted by: kantalope | March 5, 2010 2:17 AM

God is the big casino in the sky? Tilting the odds in his favor...weird.

And God said let there be pachinko, and you will know my works. Bally 15:10.

Next time reporter calls:
Ken Miller...Miller?..Miller! Oh the beer guy, lite beer good; the others meh. Now let me tell you all about yeast...

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 5, 2010 2:43 AM

And I'm not going to endorse his crusade to taint science with supernaturalism.

Also, Only A Theory was a fantastic read. It was actually a lecture he gave for that which got me looking deeper into evolution and the ID controversy.

Posted by: Your Mighty Overload - Un-True Scotsman | March 5, 2010 2:51 AM

The balance of evidence being, I should add, exactly zero for their hypothesis.

Posted by: John Morales | March 5, 2010 3:02 AM

D'oh. My previous was to Your Mighty Overload.

Sorry!

Posted by: Nomad | March 5, 2010 3:03 AM

About the possibility of Miller being misquoted.. am I wrong or are almost all of the quotes meant to reference his position not actually quotes but descriptions form the reporter? In other words, no sign that they're even words being taken out of context but perhaps outright fabrications meant to support the atheist scientist vs religious scientist war theme?

The bullshit about god not regrowing limbs because if he actually answered prayers (hello, I thought that was the WHOLE FUCKING POINT) then he'd somehow mess something up seems to be an actual quote, but.. well, that's kind of par for the course for the religionist. A person on Miller's level who doesn't deny the science itself has to leave a loophole like this, he has to redefine his religion as being only that which can never be detected or investigated in any way outside of imagining things.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 5, 2010 3:15 AM

A couple of comments:

Based on several years of observation, Ken Miller is hands down the best pro-evolution debater in North America. It really isn't even close.

Again, based on several years of observation, PZ is easily the most entertaining and trenchant critic of creationists in North America.

Both are invaluable resources for me personally, and I value them for different reasons. It's a shame that we keep having this tactical debate with respect to how atheists should comport themselves.

I personally think that Ken Miller has no business complaining about the godless's desire not to be marginalized, ignored or pilloried unfairly. I'm a theist, but it is no sweat off my back if some atheists happen to be vocal in their non-belief. I don't see how it helps the scientific enterprise one bit to discourage constitutionally-protected speech.

On the flip side, I also think that many of you here are clueless when you attempt to argue that Miller is intellectually dishonest simply because he doesn't share some of your premises. The Ken Miller I know is not your enemy, because he would never attempt to put his version of 'Darwin's God' into the public schools.

By the way, it is likely every year more people read what Miller and his colleague Joe Levine have written about evolution than any other author, living or dead---and there is nothing in their texts at all about religion one way or the other.

Posted by: John Morales | March 5, 2010 3:34 AM

Scott @40,

By the way, it is likely every year more people read what Miller and his colleague Joe Levine have written about evolution than any other author, living or dead---and there is nothing in their texts at all about religion one way or the other.

Nothing at all?

According to the linked article, "Miller's effort to bridge science and the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam began, in earnest, with the publication of Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (1999)."

Posted by: Nomad | March 5, 2010 3:45 AM

Scott, the thing is Miller does share our premises, except when he's talking about religion.

Posted by: efctony | March 5, 2010 5:28 AM

@ Rorschah 39

"If PZ was selectively quoted, is it not possible that Miller was, too?
PZ just wrote 9 paragraphs about how exactly he was selectively quoted.You would have to provide some evidence that and how Miller was, otherwise that comment doesn't really help with anything."

Nonesense, nothing needs verifying. PZ's write up comprehensively falsifies the proposition "this article is trustworthy and we can reach conclusions based on it".

"Remind me, next time I'm asked about Ken Miller, that I shouldn't bother to say anything appreciative. It will be ignored and won't be reciprocated."

PZ condemns Miller on insufficient evidence: the reporting of Miller's words by someone we know to be an unreliable witness.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | March 5, 2010 5:47 AM

Can we ask these guys why it's not OK for their God to make people's limbs grow back now, but it was OK for their God to kill millions of people back then?

Why is miraculous healing a threat to moral independence but the death of all the first born of Egypt is just peachy?

If their God cares about moral independence, where does "hardening Pharaoh's heart" fit in?

I'm also visualising a doctor saying "Well, I could treat you, but then you'd just take it for granted that you could get treatment and you'd lose your moral independence."

Miller's message to the sick: God loves you, fuck off and die.

Damn, now the Intersection will whine about me too :)

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 5, 2010 5:52 AM

This sort of sly intervention, he argues, is vital to the Creator's project: if God were to re-grow limbs for amputees, for instance -- if God were to perform the sort of miracles demanded by atheists as proof of his existence -- the consequences would be disastrous. "Suppose that it was common knowledge that if you were a righteous person and of great faith and prayed deeply, all of a sudden, your limb would grow back," he says. "That would reduce God to a kind of supranatural force . . . and by pushing the button labeled 'prayer,' you could accomplish anything you wanted. What would that do to moral independence?"

Either there's an interventionist god who selectively answers prayers from non-amputees or there's a noninterventionist god who ignores prayers completely. Since Miller is a Catholic and Catholics believe in the "power of prayer" then he's supposedly pushing for the first option. So I fail to understand what Miller's argument is. Does his god hate amputees so greatly that it ignores their prayers but listens and responds positively to other prayers?

Posted by: sudonim2 | March 5, 2010 6:10 AM

Ken Miller isn't fighting Creationism. He can't; he's an Old Earth Creationist. He's merely fighting Young Earth Creationism. In order to fight Creationism, Miller must be tossed under the bus.

P.S.
To anyone who would argue with my assessment of Miller: I welcome you to distinguish his position from that of Old Earth Creationism.

Posted by: athywren | March 5, 2010 6:26 AM

I'm not sure who I'm addressing this to... too lazy to read up and figure it out...

To the people asking why there is an issue with Miller at all:

I don't think the problem is that he believes in god, sure, it seems a bit silly that someone who works day to day in a rational and evidence based world would find themselves able to hold onto an idea with no evidence, but whatever floats your goat.
The problem comes when you start defining quantum level events as god, or the actions of god. We could easily claim that miotic division is the action of god or the draining of my sink when the plug is removed, but there is nothing in that swirling, glugging torrent that demands or even suggests an overlord.

Belief in god: fine, if you like that sort of thing.
Scientific enquiry: definitely fine.
Scientific enquiry with a liberal sprinkling of godflakes: NAUGHTY STEP!

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 5, 2010 6:39 AM

Kathy Orlinsky #53

That's the sort of sloppy thinking we've come to expect from D'Souza.

* Do people actually do have default happiness settings? I'd like to see a citation for that.

* What's to say that a major trauma, like losing a limb, doesn't reset the default?

* Perhaps the long-term default setting remains more or less constant, but the short-term setting can vary widely. Why doesn't D'Souza's god worry about the short-term effects of losing a limb?

Posted by: maddogdelta | March 5, 2010 6:43 AM

I refuse to say anything appreciative...

Was the reporter the guy in this commercial?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=der-S-J1R48

Posted by: ConcernedJoe | March 5, 2010 6:49 AM

sorry that was SaintStephen #29 infinite regression

Posted by: myownschadenfreude | March 5, 2010 6:51 AM

"How about if I say he was a long-lost Jonas Brother?"--PZ What about the Jonas Father? I'm sure Disney would appreciate that new spin.

Posted by: DLC | March 5, 2010 7:14 AM

Ken Miller at least makes his attempts in a rational (if unbelievable) manner.
I have hope for him, that he may one day see that indeed, everything he knows and has known can have existed independent of any deity.

For men such as Ken Ham,on the other hand, I have no such hope.

Posted by: mumonjmk | March 5, 2010 7:39 AM

Then there's sins like these.

Posted by: toth | March 5, 2010 8:22 AM

In theory, the shit-for-brains reporter might have done the same thing to Miller that he did to you.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 5, 2010 8:44 AM

WCorvi,
I agree, but a small nit. Nobody really knows how to define "random". Kolmogorov spent his entire life trying and the closest he came was an algorithmic definition--e.g. if the number of bits needed to define a series is equal to the number of bits in the series, then the series is random. Unfortunately, this only works for finite series, and there's some question about whether a finite series is ever truly random.

This (and various other paradoxes) is what caused deFinetti to give up entirely on any sort of measure theoretic definition of probability. The result was modern Bayesian probability.

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | March 5, 2010 8:51 AM

This sort of sly intervention, he argues, is vital to the Creator's project: if God were to re-grow limbs for amputees, for instance -- if God were to perform the sort of miracles demanded by atheists as proof of his existence -- the consequences would be disastrous.

"Suppose that it was common knowledge that if you were a righteous person and of great faith and prayed deeply, all of a sudden, your limb would grow back," he says. "That would reduce God to a kind of supranatural force . . . and by pushing the button labeled 'prayer,' you could accomplish anything you wanted. What would that do to moral independence?"

This is just pure bullshit, and it's a little surprising to me that the author postulates this example as if it's not already happening. I wrote on my blog several months ago about Lourdes and the reports of miracle healings taking place there. And despite the obvious paradox of having to accept on a very conscious level that god appears to be capricious and completely random in whom he decides is worthy of healing, it has not stemmed or even remotely slowed the stream of the steady faithful that flock there every day. The religious don't put anywhere near the sort of thought into reconciling the randomness of so-called "miracles" and faith criteria. It doesn't even occur to them to question it, as they've been taught their whole live not to... religion has a built in defense against such though processes.

Such a statement just shows that this author understands religion as poorly as he understands science and atheism.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | March 5, 2010 9:02 AM

Not much I can do when the reporter fails to tell me that the real focus of the story was on the atheist/christian battle, and how dear abused Ken was the reasonable moderate caught in the middle.

No, there isn't. I think, at this point, it should be sort of a working assumption that this is the basic story the media want to tell.

Working with news media suck. No matter what one says, the second it leaves your mouth you have no control over it. They can selectively quote to their heart's content. The problem is when dumb-ass narratives become institutionalized as "the way things are." Right now, the institutional narrative is "those poor put-upon moderates." Just as "Al Gore" became synonymous with "liar" in the 2000 campaign, "new atheist" has become synonymous with "big old meanie persecuting moderates." The stock characters are already in position. All that's needed is a quote; there's likely already a space set aside for it in the partially written text.

What it's going to take at this point, is long-term sustained activity to change the story itself. That may actually take new journalists (and editors, and publishers....)

Posted by: twpenn52 | March 5, 2010 9:17 AM

What is the point of an undetectable god that works at the quantum level? Also, why couldn't the world work if the all-powerful diety in charge of it performed miracles for those he favored? Firstly, the entire Bible assumes that is how the world work as does the Catholic Church. Sure, over time they've changed what type of miracles are to be expected, but in the Gospels Jesus healed the blind and deaf and turned water into wine. Does Miller reject those miracles? How can one be Catholic while rejecting miracles? The fundamental Catholic doctrine is that their god reanimated his son's corpse to overcome death for all mankind!!

There is no way if Ken Miller actually laid out his religious beliefs that any objective observer would label him Catholic. Unfortunately he is afraid to shed the label himself.

Posted by: broboxley OT | March 5, 2010 9:49 AM

When you believe in the existence of something for which no evidence exists (when you take something on "faith"), then you are irrational.

Posted by: Jerry Coyne | March 5, 2010 10:12 AM

Colgate Twins post on this in 3. . .2 . . . 1. . .

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 5, 2010 10:30 AM

John Morales (#42):

I was referring to Miller and Levine's high school textbook. "Finding Darwin's God" is Miller's personal take on the evo/creo wars. If you read it, you probably wouldn't have a problem with 98 percent. The 2 percent, with the quantum dodge, isn't science but a careful reading of the text shows Miller isn't presenting it as such.

Nomad (#44): I agree. But so what? I share certain premises with Donald Trump, but I don't see myself adopting his management style any time in the future. My point is that the premise by which people accuse Miller of hypocrisy or intellectual dishonesty doesn't come into play.

Q.E.D. (#67): I don't think Miller uses his position as a scientist to make an argument from authority with respect to Catholicism or any other faith. That seems as nonsensical to me as a fundy claiming that PZ uses his position as a scientist to privilege his atheist views. I don't believe either one is the case.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to claim that simply because so-and-so is a scientist, any claim they make is a scientific claim. I realize pretty stupid people exist, but I much prefer a world in which scientists with divergent personal views (like Miller and Myers) can have a go at each other without either claiming their viewpoint is privileged by their standing as scientists.

athywren (#54): Your position could be seen as suggesting that a scientist who is privately a theist has no business publicly discussing how they ATTEMPT to reconcile apparent conflicts between science and religion. I don't really think that's what you meant to suggest. Miller doesn't really put quantum indeterminacy forward as a scientific claim, as it is obvious from a careful reading of his text. It does the enterprise of science no harm if individuals defend their personal beliefs with arguments that can not be adjudicated by science, as long as they don't pretend the claims they are making are scientific claims. Miller doesn't claim that his quantum indeterminacy argument is scientific, so I don't see the point.

sudonim2(#52): I will rise to your challenge.

In the strictest of possible senses, Miller certainly is a creationist in that he believes in a creator. In the same sense, Dobzhansky, speaking more broadly, identified himself as 'both an evolutionist and a creationist.' Fair enough.

But this is NOT the sense that most of us refer to creationists, who propose not to accept the mechanism of evolution, but instead insist that we substitute a religious doctrine of 'special creation' as an explanation for life's diversity.

Properly speaking, old earth creationists (OEC) are still concerned with harmonizing the findings of science with something like a literal understanding of the Bible. They still want to substitute a creative act of a supernatural being for a well-established explanation based on natural causes. They do not believe that the latter is compatible with the existence of the former. These folk, like Hugh Ross of Reasons To Believe, will interpret the word used in Genesis ('yom') which is often translated as 'day' to mean much longer units of time, a usage which is permissible in the original Hebrew. They are still hung up on the idea that, in some way, the Biblical account is without error when properly understood.

Ken Miller doesn't believe in any of that. He does not treat Genesis as a science text, he doesn't agonize on the sequence of events described in Genesis not lining up with the fossil record, and he certainly accepts evolution as the mechanism for the generation of diversity, and does not at any time require divine intervention.

Bottom line: Miller's views are distinguishable from those typically labeled 'creationists' on the basis of how he does science, not on the basis of how he interprets scripture. That is poles apart from the way virtually all self-described 'creationsts' behave.

Posted by: MrFire | March 5, 2010 10:52 AM

If you ignore the last two chapters, Finding Darwin's God is a word-for-word better-argued, more accessible read against creationism* than The Greatest Show on Earth, in my opinion. So it's always heartbreaking to know that those two last chapters exist - it's like watching the Matrix sequels where they fuck everything up, when they should have left well alone.

*However, TGSOE is a better book for evolution.

Posted by: tytalus | March 5, 2010 11:03 AM

To Scott Hatfield, OM, re: #82

I would be interested to know how one can find 98% of a book acceptable and scientific, and 2% unacceptable and non-scientific, especially when the god argument in question is loaded with scientific terms. It would seem an intentional exercise on Miller's part to make the god argument look science-y.

Why should we have to carefully parse Miller's text to realize that this one tidbit in an otherwise reasonable book is unreasonable? And what else can we conclude, but that he was trying to make it look reasonable?

Anyway, as for PZ's dilemma, I see no one has mentioned the option of not saying anything unfriendly, especially for a supposedly 'laudable' and positive article -- giving the axe-grinders nothing to grind. Maybe a reporter would try to push you in that direction, but couldn't you just innocently say 'but I thought this was supposed to be a nice article, why mention that?' *bats eyelashes*

But I can understand why holding one's tongue might seem disingenuous. And then you'd have to make sure that everyone did that; sounds impossible. Reporters could just go trolling for the negative.

I do like the option of telling reporters you think they're going to twist your words, and done. I guess it depends on how interested PZ is in getting his name in the papers.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | March 5, 2010 11:15 AM

@78

A "new atheist" is one the Christians aren't allowed to burn at the stake.

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | March 5, 2010 11:46 AM

No.

That sounds like intellectual cowardice. So if you're a Catholic with stupid ideas, you don't get even mild criticism because that might make the critic look like a meanie, and you're still free to say some really nasty things about atheists?

Nah, I'm not going to play that game.

Yes, this.

I'd rather be taken out of context and thought of as a nasty old atheist asshole and know that I was honest and forthright when giving my opinion, than acquiesce to the Milquetoast Mafia with vapid, empty platitudes that don't reflect my actual thoughts.

I'll refuse the interview altogether before taking that tack...

Posted by: ConcernedJoe | March 5, 2010 12:17 PM

Insignificant creature steps out on a limb

A modern scientist that holds a view that there is an active (at any level) god has to reek of intellectual dishonesty and inane (perhaps insane) arguments.

While I can respect the work of such scientists - it is hard to respect a person like Miller who can push such apologetics as the quantum god ploy.

A scientist MUST reject "magic did it". It is the main rule of science. There is no getting around that - no how no way honestly.

A scientist can never accept that lack of knowledge or understanding equals goddidit. A scientist must seek natural answers for all issues of concern. Simply put: there cannot be any "god" (supernatural) in science. Science seeks answers that are natural regarding the relationships, stimuli, reactions, hows, and predictions. Why questions are wrapped up in those natural things and no more for science.

So how does the prime directive of science get reconciled to god belief? My bold answer: it does NOT because it cannot! Miller sounds silly, immature, illogical, disingenuous, or downright dishonest when his great mind tries, as does Collins, or any of the theist scientists.

I respect the work of Miller - but I am finding it hard to respect the man. Why? By way of a small example - if he does not think god performs miracles (except maybe random undetectably small ones!?!?) then why does he not attack the "Lourdes committee" and his RCC and not us atheists who on the face value point of no real miracles agree 100% with him?

Apologetics - work of ignorant, stupid, dishonest and/or disillusion people. Miller, Collins, the likes of them are not ignorant or stupid. Soooooo......

Posted by: Brain Hertz | March 5, 2010 12:31 PM

What MAJeff @ #55 & #74 said, with a little amplification: when a journalist calls you, not only have they already written the story, they've already decided what you're going to say. The interview's purpose is to get you to say approximately what they already pencilled you in to say, by whatever means necessary.

I had this done to me a few years back, when I was interviewed on the phone by a journalist, with a company press officer also on the phone. I didn't say what they guy wanted me to say. In fact, I said the exact opposite when asked a direct question. The journalist wrote me as saying what he wanted anyway, with quotes around it.

As soon as the article appeared, I had an angry company vice president on the phone wanting to know why the fuck I'd told the guy that (good job I had the press guy on the phone with me).

Oh, and the subject of the article? Not what the journalist had told me in advance of the interview.

Posted by: recovering catholic | March 5, 2010 12:43 PM

Wait--are Celtic Evolution and the Rev Big Dumb Chimp related in some way? Hairy leprechauns!

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | March 5, 2010 12:55 PM

The Rev. and I both navigate the choppy waters of the IT field for a living, are both shutterbugs, and of course share an affinity for any and all discussions involving pirates, bacon, and lesbians.

But alas, no relation otherwise.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 5, 2010 1:08 PM

tytalus (#86) writes:

"I would be interested to know how one can find 98% of a book acceptable and scientific, and 2% unacceptable and non-scientific, especially when the god argument in question is loaded with scientific terms. It would seem an intentional exercise on Miller's part to make the god argument look science-y."

Ummmm....you do realize that 'Finding Darwin's God' is not a science textbook, but a personal response by Miller to the evo/creo wars? There is no requirement that it be vetted as 100 percent science. The so-called 'God argument' is not presented as a proof or demonstration of God's existence, but how the possible existence of something like the God Miller believes in could be compatible with the present state of scientific knowledge. It's an exercise in philosophy, not science. Miller does not pretend otherwise.

I mean, there are significant chunks of Dr. Dawkins's recent works that are not scientific, either. Consider his wonderful puncturing of Fred Hoyle's misunderstanding of evolution, when he remarks that 'God is the ultimate 747.' Pithy, clever, and I found it personally helpful,but certainly not a scientific claim. Just because Dawkins's books contain exercises in reasoning about metaphysical matters, and are thus not science, doesn't mean that Dawkins has somehow sold science down the river. The same is true with Miller's arguments in this respect. Why impose some sort of 'seamless garment' argument to his popularizations, and not others?

Posted by: Kagehi | March 5, 2010 1:20 PM

You know.. Most of the scientists are looking or some "other" thing that can explain why quantum effects work on a small scale, but not a large, but there is one guy, and a few researchers, examining the prospect that its about "how much" matter you have, and suggesting there is a threshold at which gravity prevents drastic fluctuations. This seems to me to be a reasonable guess. But, more to the point, it would be damn funny for all these, "God is in the quantum!", BS. It would be, "God is in the quantum, but he is so weak that gravity prevents him doing anything to objects larger than X atoms in size.", which I rather suspect is *not* the outcome these fools are looking for. lol

Posted by: MrFire | March 5, 2010 1:22 PM

It's all a part of my master plan

Waht matser plan? we Havve on idea what ou're talknig about.

Posted by: MrFire | March 5, 2010 1:38 PM

My 106 was an unintentional blockquote fail. Should that be considered appropriate, or ironic?

Posted by: broboxley OT | March 5, 2010 2:30 PM

discussions involving pirates, bacon, and lesbians? Count me in

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 5, 2010 2:57 PM

I've been misquoted by journalists more than once. Asking for a correction or retraction is a futile endeavor.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 5, 2010 3:46 PM

Q.E.D. (#91):

You are incorrect. Miller does not conflate science with religion in his Templeton essay. What he points out is that there is a similarity between the two in that certain propositions are accepted as true without actually being demonstrated.

The difference matters. An effective critique of Miller would not focus on the (false) claim that he is conflating two different things, but how the very real differences between science and religion shape the sort of claims each can make.

Posted by: H.H. | March 5, 2010 4:00 PM

Scott Hatfield said in reply to multiple posts:

If you read ["Finding Darwin's God"], you probably wouldn't have a problem with 98 percent. The 2 percent, with the quantum dodge, isn't science but a careful reading of the text shows Miller isn't presenting it as such.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to claim that simply because so-and-so is a scientist, any claim they make is a scientific claim.

Miller doesn't really put quantum indeterminacy forward as a scientific claim, as it is obvious from a careful reading of his text. It does the enterprise of science no harm if individuals defend their personal beliefs with arguments that can not be adjudicated by science, as long as they don't pretend the claims they are making are scientific claims.

Posted by: Finch | March 5, 2010 4:05 PM

In Mr. Miller's defense, he's exactly the kind of person we need to use as an example when talking to audiences who might have a tendency to ignore someone if they're labeled an atheist. He has his Christian Credentials, and hopefully that makes it harder for the real fundies to just stopper their ears when someone starts talking about the evidence.
Not to mention that Miller is a very good presenter. He is clear, concise and doesn't degenerate into nonsense until the very end of his talks.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 5, 2010 4:28 PM

Scott Hatfield:

Ummmm....you do realize that 'Finding Darwin's God' is not a science textbook, but a personal response by Miller to the evo/creo wars? There is no requirement that it be vetted as 100 percent science. The so-called 'God argument' is not presented as a proof or demonstration of God's existence, but how the possible existence of something like the God Miller believes in could be compatible with the present state of scientific knowledge. It's an exercise in philosophy, not science. Miller does not pretend otherwise. [...]

Why impose some sort of 'seamless garment' argument to his popularizations, and not others?

I'm not sure I buy this, and I think I mostly don't.

It seems to me that you're begging a central question or two here, which need to be brought out.

As I see it, some central themes of the New Atheism are:

1) Religion is not off limits to rational scrutiny; subject matter of religion overlaps almost entirely with the domain of science, and science can scrutinize pretty much all religious claims, including claims that most people think are beyond scientific scrutiny, e.g., about the purported supernatural entities, morality, and religion itself. There is no defensible NOMA-like line anywhere. If you claim that there is one, you have to make it clear and defend it, because even people who think there is such a line do not agree on where it is.

2) Science and rationalistic philosophy are continuous with each other. There is no line, and certainly no well-defined line, which separates scientific claims "philosophical" or "metaphysical" ones. (Or if there is, you need to make it much, much clearer what you're talking about.)

3) You're allowed to use "philosophical" arguments in science, e.g., to show that a theoretical construct is wrong because it's inconsistent, or that it's very dubious because it is contrived precisely to avoid falsifiability. We do this all the time in science---we don't bother with experiments and data analysis to disprove something that's obviously nonsense, or not even wrong. Nobody has ever given a good reason to exempt religious claims from this sort of commonplace rational scrutiny, and the reasons typically given are clearly invalid because they do not work in many historical cases (e.g., Galileo's).

4) Most specifically religious claims are either evidently false in light of science (e.g., the existence of traditional dualistic souls), or contrived specifically to avoid falsifiability (e.g., liberal theologians' reduced and rarefied concepts of "God" or "souls"). Science is not neutral toward unfalsifiable theoretical constructs. They are typically provisionally discarded as probably wrong. Nobody has ever given good reasons for exempting religious claims from being regarded as wrong, not even wrong, or probably wrong, as we would similar claims not conveniently labeled as "religious."

5) All common religious claims are insupportable in light of modern science, including central claims about gods, souls, divine revelation, and spiritual experiences. We have pretty good scientific reasons to believe that religion in general is a kind of popular delusion, and excellent reasons for doubting the distinctive claims of particular religions.

One of the basic pieces of evidence against religion and religions is that they religions disagree with each other. Most religions must be wrong about at least some central claims, because they can't all be right when they disagree about such basic things as the number or gods, whether such a god is a person, whether a personal god has particular personality traits, whether a god created the universe, whether such creation was ex nihilo, the nature of morality, the relationship between gods and morality, whether the soul is immortal, the nature of any afterlife (e.g., Heaven or Hell us. Reincarnation vs. merger into the Universal Mind vs. other options), the nature of justice, etc.

That kind of argument is often characterized as "philosophical" and therefore somehow not scientific, but that's a basic and enormous category mistake. (Perhaps because it's been around since before what we'd clearly call "science" in the modern sense.)

It is simply not true that an argument can't be both a philosophical argument and a scientific one---and simple common sense, to boot. Many arguments in science are just like that.

Science would not work without this kind of basic rational analysis, and nobody has shown why religion is somehow exempt from it.

6) History shows that exempting religious claims from this kind of scientific scrutiny is typically an error, in hindsight. (E.g., attempts to reconcile Galileo's model of the solar system with scriptural geocentrism, by tweaking it "just a little" so that they're observationally indistinguishable.)

7) That pattern is so clear now that we should be extremely dubious on scientific grounds of what people like Collins and Miller do to preserve orthodoxy, and even what people like Haught and Armstrong do to preserve even minimally contentful "religious" tenets.

8) We therefore can infer scientifically that most common religion is substantially wrong, and that it's likely all wrong to the extent that it has any distinctively "religious" content that is or implies any fact claims, as essentially all religion does. (Even most rarefied modern liberal theology designed to appear consistent with science.)

Empirically speaking, religion tends toward error, and scientifically speaking, that appears to be due to systematic mistakes at the core of religiosity---e.g., belief in divine revelation, or a revelatory character of spiritual experiences.

By default, we should guess that divine revelations are not what they purport to be---most of them clearly are not, and while it's possible that some are, it's not scientifically plausible. (Or at the barest minimum, people's faith in distinctively religious propositions is typically misplaced, so people should generally be much more agnostic than they actually are, and much less self-congratulatory about being religious.)

Likewise, we should guess that personal "spiritual" insight is generally not what it is commonly interpreted as---it's an experience of an odd and extremely error-prone mode of information processing in a machine made out of meat, not anything remotely resembling a soul getting in touch with Deep Truth by any means other than unconscious guessing.

Science and atheism---broadly construed to include agnostic atheism---therefore are a seamless garment. That is largely the point.

New Atheists may differ in where they draw lines between what they choose to label "philosophy" and hat they choose to label "science," but they generally agree that it is a seamless garment of rationality that extends from the obviously sciency stuff like particle physics and biology through things like psychology and neuroscience all they way through things like cognitive anthropology at least---and that's far enough to show that religion is systematically bogus and probably wrong, in something very much like scientific terms, whether you choose to call it that or not.

At first blush, it sounds reasonable when you say that somebody like Miller is not trying to make a seamless garment of science and religion, in the way I claim the New Atheist are making a seamless garment of science and agnostic atheist rationalism.

But in context, and given their stated goals, they're doing something very similar.

The apologetics of Miller and Collins (and even Armstrong and Haught) are in fact largely intended to counter the New Atheist position that science rationally undermines religion.

That's pretty explicit---all those people are claiming that the New Atheists are wrong, and that there is a seam somewhere between science and either religion or positive irreligion. (By the latter I mean atheism in the vernacular sense, or agnosticism in the original sense of denying that anybody can know whether theres a god.)

Miller may not be presenting a seamless garment, but he is clearly trying to show that

1) if there's a seam between science and religion---his versions of each anyway---it's not a particularly awkward and uncomfortable seam; it's a well-stitched and gracefully joined garment at worst, and

2) the New Atheists are wrong to say that they do have a seamless garment.

He fails miserably at both.

Posted by: InfraredEyes | March 5, 2010 4:29 PM

But to reject God because of the admitted self-contradictions and logical failings of organized religion would be like rejecting physics because of the inherent contradictions of quantum theory and general relativity. Science, all of science, is necessarily incomplete—this is, in fact, the reason why so many of us find science to be such an invigorating and fulfilling calling. Why, then, should we be surprised that religion is incomplete and contradictory as well?

Look, he is drawing a parallel here between the "incompleteness and contradictoriness" of physics and the "incompleteness and contradictoriness" of religion. He is using quantum theory as an example. You can call it pearl-clutching if you like, but I think it is a categorical mistake to compare theology with science in this way. And, in the particular case of quantum theory, there are already too many people looking for parallels with/explanations for various brands of woo. Miller's comments don't help.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 5, 2010 5:26 PM

Scott Hatfield:

No one is trying to prevent Miller from being criticized here. I just don't think it's a good rhetorical strategy to go after his supposed lack of scientific ethics, simply because he indulges in a thought experiment that can't be adjudicated by science.

The problem is that he's misrepresenting the nature of science to say that the claim can't be at least provisionally adjudicated by science.

His apologetics is analogous to the apologetic position urged on Galileo by some of the Catholic authorities trying to paper over his heresy.

They suggested to Galileo that he should present his heliocentric model as a false but useful one, becuause of course the scriptures are right that the sun goes around the Earth.

They correctly pointed out that an observationally equivalent geocentric model would only be slightly more complicated---all you have to do is add a couple of relativizing axioms, and you can say that the sun goes around the earth in just such a way that it's indistinguishable from the earth as in his original model.

It really was a very small change, smaller than many changes that were made later---e.g., elliptical orbits, not-quite-elliptical orbits with the reduction to Newtons's laws of motion, and especially geodesics through Einsteins relativistic spacetime.

But Galileo was right to resist such a small change, becuase it was a contrivance---the original model was not designed to be unfalsifiable, but the orthodoxy-saving "slightly different" version was. Galileo was right to reject that change, and to give religious considerations essentially zero weight.

Miller, on the other hand, is perfectly willing to weave a just-so story about quantum physics, etc., in order to make theistic evolution observationally indistinguishable from atheistic evolution. (In most ways. It's a bit worse than that in some ways.)

No one is arguing that the argument has to be taken seriously as science, including Miller. It's essentially a religious apologetic, and you don't have to like it.

Oh good, because I really don't like it.

More than that, I don't think saying that it's not "a scientific argument" gets him off the hook.

I think it's pseudoscientific and a kind of selective science denialism that is in fact antiscientific. (In the selective way that antiscience usually is, only more so.)

Let's avoid the term "quantum woo" and say that Miller is engaging instead in quantum fu---a tricky move designed to evade falsifiability, by coming up with a convenient interpretation of quantum mechanics that quantum physicists would think for good scientific reasons is unfalsifiable but still probably false.

Scientists rightly look askance at theories contrived to evade falsification, just as Galileo so rightly did. They make a provisional guess that such things are wrong. (Or what's maybe worse, not even wrong.)

They are not neutral toward unfalsifiable stuff, as accommodationist and compatibilist rhetoric often says or implies. The unfalsifiable is not off limits to scientific judgment. Scientists judge unfalsifiable theories every day, and almost invariably judge them skeptically and harshly.

Giving undue weight to a hypothesis that's contrived to be unfalsifiable is not just "not scientific." It's antiscientific in the same sense that many Young Earth Creationist weaselings are antiscientific---and for exactly the same reason.

Miller is doing what apologists typically do, namely bogifying the science to evade falsification, in order to preserve points of religious orthodoxy.

You can criticize it to, ahem, high heaven. That's fine. But don't make the mistake of saying things like 'This argument isn't science, therefore it's false', or 'Dr. Miller is betraying science by writing about religion' or some such nonsense.

Miller is doing antiscientific apologetics in the same basic way and for the same basic reason as creationists, and he is likewise trying to make it sound like it's not antiscientific.

That is the sense in which Miller literally is a creationist, even if he's not a Creationist in the obvious, prototypical and stereotypical sense. He's doing the same thing for the same reason, just narrowing his scope and doing it more cleverly.

It's still antiscientific.

Honestly, some of you people seem to think science exists to prop up your particular metaphysical position.

Honestly, you're full of shit, on that particular point.

We don't think that science exists to prop up atheism. We think science exists to explain things honestly and as correctly as possible.

We are atheists largely because we take that seriously, and refuse to engage in antiscientific bullshit, and the sort of selective science denialism that Miller engages in.

Science and religion do conflict, and we go with the science.

I, in particular, find modern cognitive science to be pretty compelling stuff, and think it undermines pretty much all religion that's clearly religion. Miller, like most science denialists, glosses over or conveniently bogifies the sciences most relevant to his thesis.

As a scientist, I think that sucks, whether he calls it a scientific theory or not. Calling it apologetics doesn't excuse it, because NOMA and anything remotely like it is false.

Posted by: timpanogos.wordpress.com | March 5, 2010 5:32 PM

Remind me, next time I'm asked about Ken Miller, that I shouldn't bother to say anything appreciative. It will be ignored and won't be reciprocated. And I'm not going to endorse his crusade to taint science with supernaturalism.

If the reporter failed to use all the nice things you said about Miller, what are the odds the reporter failed to use all the nice things Miller said about you?

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 5, 2010 5:37 PM

If the reporter failed to use all the nice things you said about Miller, what are the odds the reporter failed to use all the nice things Miller said about you?

what are the odds that your question has already been asked and answered, and was irrelevant to begin with?

Posted by: Sastra | March 5, 2010 5:53 PM

Scot Hatfield, OM #119 wrote:

Honestly, some of you people seem to think science exists to prop up your particular metaphysical position.

My understanding is that metaphysics deals with answers to the question "what is the nature of reality?"

Do you think that we should all start out with our particular answers? If not, how do we arrive at them? Through careful methods which evolved to eliminate and correct personal bias and human errors -- or methods which are designed to enshrine them, as sacred?

Of course, per Faith, you have a RIGHT to BELIEVE whatEVER you WANT!

Posted by: H.H. | March 5, 2010 6:05 PM

Paul W., warning heeded. And I'd like to say that I'm in full agreement with everything you wrote in comment #124. You'll be getting my vote for the Molly.

Posted by: John Morales | March 5, 2010 6:11 PM

[meta]

H.H., it's officially Paul W., OM.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 5, 2010 6:39 PM

Sastra (#112):

"But that's the problem. Miller is pretending that it should be an exercise in philosophy, instead of an argument in science."

???

Do you think the 'many-worlds' interpretation of quantum physics is philosophy, or science? When people start talking about the necessary existence of universes where Walt Disney was elected President of the United States, I turn the vacuum cleaner back on.

I just don't see how those kinds of claims can ever be considered scientific arguments, so I don't see how Miller is guilty of bad faith.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 5, 2010 7:24 PM

how is that not just a restatement of a god of the gaps argument, Scott?

how is Miller saying that science wouldn't even exist as a discipline without god not a fine tuning argument?

I see no evidence this is so.

you're willfully blind to it, you mean.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 5, 2010 8:04 PM

Ichthyic: (#138)

"how is that not just a restatement of a god of the gaps argument, Scott?"

Some of you guys and gals just aren't applying your usual toolkit to the question at hand. 'God of the gaps' is properly applied to explanations that attempt to plug mysteries with the divine. Miller doesn't appear to be doing that. As PZ correctly noted above, Miller is not claiming that the quantum is supernatural, he's suggesting that the supernatural could be using quantum indeterminacy to game the system in a way not presently detectable to natural science.

I don't actually think much of that argument, but I think it is sufficient to exclude it on methodological grounds. One doesn't need to accuse Miller of bad faith, intellectual dishonesty, etc. to reject the argument.

Some people here have also suggested that 'god of the gaps' is a fallacy of sorts. This is only true, however, if one takes the step of presenting the conclusion of the argument as logically warranted:

A: We don't have any explanation for this mystery 'X'

B: Therefore, the explanation MUST be Mystery God #17

Yes, that's a version of the Argument from Ignorance. But is that really what Miller is arguing? Isn't it true that he's merely showing how he might attempt to be squaring his beliefs with the present state of scientific knowledge? Does he really present his conclusion as the necessary consequence of the facts available to us?

If so, that is a logical fallacy and he should probably think more deeply about his position.

If, on the other hand, he didn't make such an argument, then it seems to be that his position is neither illogical or necessarily fallacious...the hue and cry from outraged partisans here not withstanding.

"how is Miller saying that science wouldn't even exist as a discipline without god not a fine tuning argument?"

I don't follow this. I'm not aware that science requires God to exist. I think the actual argument is that cultures that presumed lawfulness (a fruitful axiom for scientific pursuits) tended to also presume a Lawgiver, and hence tended to foster certain kinds of scientific inquiry. But I don't see necessarily any connection between that assumption and cosmological fine tuning arguments.

"you're willfully blind to it, you mean."

Where is your evidence in support of my previous brief, that "a faith-based, evidence-free claim should be accepted as science?" I don't see it. If,indeed, I am blind, you should be able to point to where Miller makes this assertion chapter-and-verse and I will gladly withdraw my objection.......

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 5, 2010 8:28 PM

Some people here have also suggested that 'god of the gaps' is a fallacy of sorts.

suggested?

God of the Gaps is an informal logical fallacy where a participant uses a lack (real or presupposed) of mundane explanation for something as evidence of supernatural intervention.

This is a fallacy because just because one is unaware of a mundane explanation, or just because a mundane explanation has not yet been found, does not mean that one does not exist. As such, it is an example of argument from ignorance.

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/God_of_the_Gaps_Fallacy

scott, seriously, exit yourself stage left.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 5, 2010 9:38 PM

Scott Hatfield says, "One doesn't need to accuse Miller of bad faith, intellectual dishonesty, etc. to reject the argument."

No, one could instead accuse him of not understanding the first fucking thing about quantum mechanics and using the fact that quantum mechanics seems mysterious to him as a way to justify the unjustifiable.

This isn't a "god of the gaps" argument so much as it is a "god of the--oh, sorry, I thought there was a gap here" argument! In effect, he is saying, "Oh, I don't understand it. It must be God!"

For some reason, Catholics seem to love this sort of argument. Look, has Ken ever bothered to look at how frigging tiny Planck's constant is? Has he ever figured out how many little rigged quantum dice a deity would have to throw to get H2O to turn into sugar, H2O and C2H50H?

This is worse than a fallacy. This is a self-delusion wearing a mask of science.

Posted by: H.H. | March 5, 2010 10:29 PM

Scott wrote:

'God of the gaps' is properly applied to explanations that attempt to plug mysteries with the divine. Miller doesn't appear to be doing that.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 6, 2010 12:33 AM

Icthyic: (#142)

My brief 'suggested' refers to the claim that Miller himself is proposing a 'god of the gaps' argument. I did not mean to suggest that something labeled as such is a logical fallacy. As evidence of that fact, I draw your attention again to my post #140, wherein I wrote:

"If so, that is a logical fallacy and he should probably think more deeply about his position."

I regret if my prose style was confusing. But you have to admit that people here are using the term 'god of the gaps' very loosely, and not every sense in which it has been used here refers to the sense which is a logical fallacy sensu stricto...

Sorry about the *headdesk*....I hope it didn't leave a mark. But, again, the first claim I was referencing (which concerns the historical relationship between science and theism) is distinguishable from the second claim of cosmic fine tuning. I mean, this is so obviously the case I fail to see why your head slipped. I invite you to explain how they are indistinguishable or necessarily linked.

Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official | March 6, 2010 12:39 AM

Scott Hatfield:

As nice a guy as you may be, you still have yet to explain why anyone ought to believe in your Christian deity. You're nice and all, but dude you've got nothing.

You're one of the nicest, most polite commenters here. But your theology is just as stupid and vacant as Ken Miller's, or anyone else's.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 6, 2010 12:50 AM

H.H. (#147) writes:

"Scott, we both know the whole point of Miller's apologetics is to find a sufficiently unknowable corner of reality for his god to hide in. He has no interest testing 'X."

Actually, I'm not sure that we know that, only that our mutual experiences with religious apologists may lead both of us to suspect that they habitually reason from their preferred conclusion, rather than toward it.

But let's say that this is true. I dunno, could be. I'm not Ken Miller, I don't know what goes on in his heart of hearts. But let's grant it.

What difference does it make what motivates Ken Miller?

Does that have any bearing one way or the other on whether his notion is scientific? (It isn't)

Does it have any bearing on the question of whether the argument is made in the imperative form that would render it a logical fallacy? (As far as I can see, this claim has not been demonstrated)

Does it have any bearing or other on whether the conclusion of his argument is logically permissible? (It is permissible, by the way)

Thinking clearly, Ken Miller's motives do not appear to have any bearing on any of those questions. Why bring it up? Would you reject an argument made against the misconduct of a Catholic prelate simply because the person making the argument was known to reject Catholic teachings? I doubt it. I suspect that you would like to believe that you could dispassionately evaluate the claim itself.

As would I, where Miller is concerned. I am not much impressed by his argument, as I mentioned before. But I would hope that I would not make the mistake of giving either a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' based on his presumed motives.

Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official | March 6, 2010 1:02 AM

So, what is it Scott? What's your evidence for your god? Don't talk to me about Ken Miller, I don't care about that.

I want to hear your evidence for your god.

Come on. It's not hard.

Posted by: Leigh Williams, Feminist, OM | March 6, 2010 2:15 AM

Well, Josh, you asked Scott, not me, but I'm going to answer anyway.

I want to hear your evidence for your god.

Let me go further: there is no evidence (that I'm aware of) for any god at all.

"Evidence" must, by definition, be demonstrable and verifiable by other people. The only method I'm aware of to construct a mutually-agreed-on definition of reality that transcends culture is the scientific method.

What I have, and what I presume Scott and Ken Miller have also, is personal experiences. What I have done is to take my personal experiences and fit them to a cultural framework. In so doing, I have very consciously adopted those parts of the framework that seem to me ethical, or at least neutrally benign, and reject those that are evil.

The God that I've constructed for myself is, therefore, what I've called in the past "a pink and fluffy God". S/he is represented by Jesus Christ, also a personal construct, who may (or may not) have lived on earth as a Jewish rabbi who came to relieve suffering, advocate for justice, and overcome death through selfless love for everyone. The Christ represents my aspiration to overcome my own tendency to self-absorption and turn my attention, time, and material wealth towards other people. It is a way to reinforce my desire to be a giver instead of a taker.

I don't participate too much any more in organized religious activities, however, because I see quite clearly that basing decisions on what we religious people erroneously assume to be a shared and identical experience of God is very, very dangerous. Personal experiences are not evidence.

Any group of people who come together on such a basis are all too apt to turn into an echo chamber that reinforces culturally-engendered prejudices, a dangerous submission to authority, and an us-versus-them mentality that inflames our natural impulse towards tribal violence.

By this of course I mean real violence, not the hot language that we sometimes use here. Pharyngula is many things, but it is not an echo chamber.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2010 2:30 AM

Leigh Williams, Queen of Cognitive Dissonance:

What I have, and what I presume Scott and Ken Miller have also, is personal experiences. What I have done is to take my personal experiences and fit them to a cultural framework. In so doing, I have very consciously adopted those parts of the framework that seem to me ethical, or at least neutrally benign, and reject those that are evil.

The God that I've constructed for myself is, therefore, what I've called in the past "a pink and fluffy God". S/he is represented by Jesus Christ, also a personal construct, who may (or may not) have lived on earth as a Jewish rabbi who came to relieve suffering, advocate for justice, and overcome death through selfless love for everyone. The Christ represents my aspiration to overcome my own tendency to self-absorption and turn my attention, time, and material wealth towards other people. It is a way to reinforce my desire to be a giver instead of a taker.

Posted by: Leigh Williams, Feminist, OM | March 6, 2010 2:58 AM

Sorry, I overlooked your request for more specificity.

Let's take, for example, the issue of gay marriage. The priests who wrote Leviticus called homosexual sex an abomination (exactly the same word they used for wearing mixed-fiber clothing and eating shellfish). St. Paul also seems to have found it rather squicky, perhaps a culturally-induced bias due to his Jewish upbringing, though some argue that he was condemning temple prostitution. I don't care which it was.

To me it is a clear civil rights issue in which a minority is denied a benefit by the majority. There is no evidence, none at all, that societal harm will come from it. Ethically the choice is therefore clear, and I am an advocate for gay marriage. I see no reason that the prejudices rampant in several-thousands-year-old Jewish culture should be legally enforceable in U.S. law. Happily, most modern-day Jews agree, with the lamentable exception of the Orthodox, who share a dim view of sexual equality of all kinds with their fundamentalist Muslim and Christian brethren.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 6, 2010 3:16 AM

Leigh: I can't speak for Ken Miller, but you and I are certainly sympatico in the sense that we recognize that our personal experiences do not count as evidence.

Mr. T: With respect to my earlier brief, at #157 you ask: "Is there any difference?"

If you will read my earlier comments, this has to do with the question of whether Miller is committing a fallacy when he suggests where (in your words) Yahweh might be hiding out, hating amputees. I argued that what is recognized as a logical fallacy only comes into play when it is framed in the IMPERATIVE form. That is to say, an argument of the form "There is mystery, therefore, it MUST be Hidden-Hater-of-Amputees." Miller, on the other hand is indulging a possibility: the Hidden-Hater-of-Amputees MIGHT be acting, in a way not detectable, such as in the quantum world.

I am not advocating for Miller's viewpoint when I point out that this is not a logical fallacy. I am implicitly arguing that he is not guilty of bad faith with respect to the scientific enterprise in entertaining this prospect as a personal matter.

By the way, I take the same stance with respect to 'The God Delusion'. Dawkins doesn't damage the scientific enterprise by expressing his personal views on God's non-existence, nor does he attempt to claim that his arguments impel non-belief. He goes out of his way to acknowledge that he is not making such a claim, and that there is a remote possibility that he is wrong. Many people who no doubt view themselves as his acolytes would profit from a closer reading of their idol.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 6, 2010 3:30 AM

By the way, I take the same stance with respect to 'The God Delusion'. Dawkins doesn't damage the scientific enterprise by expressing his personal views on God's non-existence, nor does he attempt to claim that his arguments impel non-belief.

then you would be WRONG, again, since Dawkins is not trying to hide god in an indeterminacy, like Miller is trying to do, he is attacking poor theology, while Miller is not only CREATING poor theology, but muddling science with it as well.

so, no, I do not grant you equivalence.

Dawkins is talking about religion on its own merits, while Miller is trying to talk about science using religion's merits.

NOT THE SAME THING.

I really hate religious apologists. no matter how nice and friendly they are, they always muddle things up in the end.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2010 3:41 AM

Miller, on the other hand is indulging a possibility.

If it's not simply that he's arguing from ignorance, then what supports it? Is he not making an argument, but only "indulging" himself by asserting without evidence that there's some kind of possibility?

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2010 4:10 AM

Leigh:

On what basis, therefore, do you demand that I give up a religious belief that is important to me? Because you fear that it might, just might, cause me (me personally) to make bad choices in my life? What business is that of yours?

I try to say what I actually mean without confusing myself and others with a string of metaphors and other ways of knowing. By my count, I only wrote two demands. The rest were questions and statements.

Don't take this personally...

Just be a good person because you want to be a good person.

I think these are reasonable. If you have a problem with either, then please feel free not to comply with them.

I'd like to know on what basis you think you are capable of anything remotely like this: "The God that I've constructed for myself...".

Hubris and self-centeredness come in many forms.

If you're really busying yourself constructing gods, then as a fellow participant in this universe, I personally would like to know. However, if you're just bullshitting and playing pretend, then I couldn't care less so long as no one is harmed.

Posted by: negentropyeater | March 6, 2010 5:34 AM

Just be a good person because you want to be a good person.

many people apparently need role models to motivate them in doing just that.

Posted by: windy | March 6, 2010 6:22 AM

Scott:
"a few remarks at my expense in front of the hordes of loyal Pharynguloids"
...
"Many people who no doubt view themselves as [Dawkins'] acolytes would profit from a closer reading of their idol."

I was just going to defend you against the outrageous charge of being a Mooninite, but what's all this stereotyping then?

"Dawkins doesn't [...] attempt to claim that his arguments impel non-belief. He goes out of his way to acknowledge that he is not making such a claim, and that there is a remote possibility that he is wrong."

What book did you read? What would have been the the point of going on about the "God Hypothesis" and scientific evidence, if Dawkins was just talking about a "personal matter"? There's always the possibility that we might be wrong about any claim, that's not the issue here.

It seems that you are trying to say that we can't have a double standard where Dawkins is allowed to write popular books endorsing atheism but Miller is attacked for writing popular books endorsing Catholicism? I agree, but I don't think anyone is arguing for that exactly, but against the specifics of Miller's claims.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | March 6, 2010 6:40 AM

It's more that Miller is attacked for writing books which claim, falsely, that the findings of science support Catholicism, whereas Dawkins is praised for writing books which claim, correctly, that the evidence supports atheism (no positive evidence for any deity). Trying to render it all as personal endorsements is to miss the point.

Posted by: windy | March 6, 2010 6:52 AM

Personal experiences are not evidence.

Eyewitness (and other-organ-witness) testimony is evidence, it's just usually not very good.

Posted by: negentropyeater | March 6, 2010 7:46 AM

As an organization, service to the community. That's what we're explicitly called to do: feed the hungry, comfort the sick (medical attention works well for this!), visit the prisoners, advocate for social justice.

My reading of the New Testament doesn't indicate we should engage in politics or fight in holy wars (even culture wars); quite the contary, in fact.

As a body of knowledge, to provide a benevolent and ethical framework into which those of us subject to apprehensions of diety (neurological storms of some kind? neurotic need? weakmindedness? perhaps), which is apparently a sizable proportion of the population, can understand those experiences and use them to do good instead of harm to society.

Same thing with a subject of discussion, aren't you saying that the role of religions is to deal with the problems caused by religions ?

Look, I've already shared that I've had similar strong experiences as you, Scott and Ken Miller. But why the need to fit them into a cultural framework that's evidently imposed by other people ?
I just don't see what benefit you get from this, and I can see a lot of disadvantages of doing so. Maybe you can explain more about this.

So even if people have strong personal experiences that they might interpret as communication with God, why not just stop there, and as you rightfully say, leave it to a purely private matter ? It seems to me that as soon as they start trying to fit this into preexistant cultural frameworks, whichever it is, they put themselves at the mercy of all the pitfalls of religions.

Posted by: ConcernedJoe | March 6, 2010 8:19 AM

Leigh Williams - re: believing in "god" scientist or not: "...if they just leave it at this (excuse a way of saying) 'this stuff floats my boat' -- I say great whatever helps give you peace and happiness as long as you don't dictate it on me. ... [But] Atheist attitudes in science are MORE than OK - they are REQUIRED!! You may not be a Atheist - but when you put on a lab coat or take up a pen as as a scientist you better act like one!"

People at the stature of Miller and Collins are using their credentials as scientists to fit god into science and even worse undermine science by providing stealth-like cover to those that would actively and viciously undermine the enterprise. Again - anyone - even an esteemed scientist who just says [and leaves it at this] "I just believe - it gives me peace and I FEEL better for it - it is just a personal thing and my felt belief and any god have NO place in science" I for one would NEVER call any foul committed nor BTW think that person silly; for me it would be ridiculous but hey if it floats your boat and you do no harm go for it.

To the general defenders of Miller again I say: "because Miller and the like actually do place god into science in their musings. To say another way Dawkins in my readings is presenting a counter to "goddidit" not [a counterpoint] to science. Where Miller is in essence presenting a counter to a fundamental rule of science [That seems dishonest for a SCIENTIST]. [H]e is a scientist arguing against [the fundamental rule of] science. Dawkins by example in my view is presenting a counter to those that would inject god into what should be an atheist enterprise. [That seems legit for a SCIENTIST]"

I am not saying a scientist must be atheist - please read above.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 6, 2010 9:38 AM

Frankly, I find Miller's God of the Bandgaps even more pernicious than the God of the Gaps. The latter is bad enough. It leads to people opposing scientific research into the white spaces of scientific knowledge. However, the God of the Bandgaps seems to require a deity who hides in the shadows away from the most precise instruments of scientific measurement--a deceitful deity. If I were an Xtian, I think that I would be especially wary of positing a deity that was subject to Bell's Inequality.

Frankly, I find Leigh's deity to be more palatable. Her deity seems to be more like the deities in Terry Pratchett's diskworld--an anthropic personification of the orderliness of the Universe. While it may be unsatisfying to be unable to resolve this question empirically, at least such a deity doesn't find it necessary to continually jam its divine thumbs into the celestial clockwork.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 6, 2010 11:36 AM

Ichthyic (#163 and onward):

"it's been directly pointed out to you that Miller's argument is in fact, an exact god of the gaps argument, i even quoted the damn definition for you so you could see how well it fits, and you simply, willfully, refuse to acknowledge it."

No. I understand the definition. I've claimed that, in order for an argument to be fallacious, it must have a logical structure whose outcome is imperative. I've made that point more than once in this thread. I will make it again.

Ex. 1

Brand 'X' is favored by 9 out of 10 doctors.

Therefore, Brand 'X' is the best brand.

This is a 'bandwagon' argument, and a logical fallacy. Brand 'X' may be the best brand, but the claim that 9 out of 10 doctors favor it is not conclusive. 9 out of 10 doctors could be wrong.

But suppose we say this....

Ex. 2

Brand 'X' is favored by 9 out of 10 doctors.

This is evidence that the medical profession is well-disposed toward the merits of Brand 'X'.

This makes pretty much the same appeal to a herd mentality, but it is NOT a logical fallacy.

My claim is that in his PUBLIC pronouncements about his PRIVATE beliefs, Miller makes statements that are more like Ex. 2 (conditional, provisional, non-imperative) than Ex. 1 (imperative, and clearly fallacious).

That doesn't mean, by the way, that Miller's argument is convincing. It doesn't convince me, for example, precisely because it is not amenable to test.

Posted by: Sastra | March 6, 2010 2:04 PM

Oh, I missed nice stuff last night!

Leigh Williams, Queen of Cognitive Dissonance #156 wrote:

What I have, and what I presume Scott and Ken Miller have also, is personal experiences. What I have done is to take my personal experiences and fit them to a cultural framework.

And what you apparently did not do, was try to analyze your personal experiences against the framework of modern science, to test your interpretation of said experience. Personal experience is indeed evidence, and can be fit into a larger, intersubjective model of reality.

Consider this analogy: a person who is lost in the desert sees an oasis which disappears when he approaches it. He concludes that he has come across a magical desert-based Brigadoon. After he is rescued, he reads extensive literature on the desert, and discovers that it is very common to hallucinate under certain conditions. He studies the neurological and psychological explanations for hallucinating an oasis in the desert.

But his conclusion re Brigadoon does not change, because he had a personal experience. It's not open to investigation, because he was there, and he saw what he saw, and nobody else can say he didn't. Not for sure.

The God that I've constructed for myself is, therefore, what I've called in the past "a pink and fluffy God."

Serious question here: does it matter to you if God exists as anything other than a useful mental construct? Would it change anything if it doesn't? Would it change anything, even for you?

Oh no, I'm not an atheist. God is very real . . . to me.

"Real" as in factually true, or "real" as in personally valid? Does the distinction matter?

But if your point is that I shouldn't believe in God because you don't think he's real, I'm going to tell you to mind your own business and leave mine to me.

I think our point is that you shouldn't believe in God because it's not real -- and your point seems to be that this doesn't -- and wouldn't -- matter to you.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2010 3:28 PM

Sastra, I really like the oasis analogy.

Leigh, of the cognitive dissonance:

Perhaps my choice of words was infelicitous; I thought it obvious I was using "construct" in its verb meaning, "To create (an argument or a sentence, for example) by systematically arranging ideas or terms" and in its noun meaning, "A concept, model, or schematic idea."

What, did you imagine me molding a golden calf with laser eyes, or some such?

Pardon me for stating the obvious, but mental constructs do not create the universe, nor are they in any other way supernatural or divine. You're conflating or equivocating two very different things: (1) the existence of a "God", and (2) the existence of your concept of a "God".

You wrote that you create this concept for yourself. You wrote about how Jesus "represents [your] aspiration" and is "a way to reinforce [your] desire". You've made a religion of your own mind, and do this by confusing (1) with (2). Which of those are you referring to when you say "God is very real . . . to me"?

Although I didn't feel like responding to this before, I'll do so now:

Because you fear that it might, just might, cause me (me personally) to make bad choices in my life? What business is that of yours?

I don't care in the slightest about your Personal Beliefs™, which you claim are so benign and ethical. You made them public here, so in this limited domain it is "my business" and I am free to comment on them. If some belief makes you feel better, or helps you to be a more ethical person, I don't think there's any reason to object to it -- knock yourself out. Atheists can be "good without God", so unless you're implying otherwise, it doesn't matter to me which stories you use to motivate yourself. It also has nothing to do with the truth of the belief itself....

When you make a choice (good or bad), it affects the world. However much it may comfort you to believe it, you are not in some kind of causal vacuum where your Personal Choices™ are untouchable and unassailable. So please don't whine about how I "demand" that you give up your religion. I would like you to seriously question whether they're in any way true or meaningful. If they're so important to you, then their truth should also be important.

Posted by: consciousness razor | March 6, 2010 5:15 PM

Scott, #189:

See, to me this implies that since Leigh Williams is not approaching her belief system from Mr. T's preferred point of attack, that she has not seriously questioned whether they're in any way true or meaningful. I'm not sure that there's any way Mr. T could actually know that. A different set of assumptions up front could lead to a very different process of self-examination, and, perhaps, a different outcome.

Leigh wrote at #167:

But if your point is that I shouldn't believe in God because you don't think he's real, I'm going to tell you to mind your own business and leave mine to me.

Sastra responded at #186:

I think our point is that you shouldn't believe in God because it's not real -- and your point seems to be that this doesn't -- and wouldn't -- matter to you.

Leigh again, back at #159:

I have no desire -- not to mention, no ability -- to convince you that s/he is real, and in fact would consider that to be very disrespectful. I'm content to let you have your personal life ordered as you like it.

If "God" to her means some kind of personal life choice, rather than an actual being that actually exists with actual properties, then I am at a loss for words. I do not think it means what she thinks it means. There is little indication in her servings of word salad that she takes seriously the possibility that her beliefs may be false.

Otherwise, if she is talking about an actual being who actually exists, it is a claim about the natural or supernatural world, and can be evaluated as such. No amount of handwaving or backpedaling about the limits of reason, epistemic humility or other ways of knowing will change that.

Posted by: Sastra | March 6, 2010 5:42 PM

Leigh Williams #159 wrote:

I have no desire -- not to mention, no ability -- to convince you that s/he is real, and in fact would consider that to be very disrespectful. I'm content to let you have your personal life ordered as you like it.

Why does this question break down into personal lives? Imagine we are talking about whether vitalism exists, or horizontal gene transfer, or whether sheep live in Scotland. I won't argue against your views on those matters when I think you're wrong, because I'm content to let you have your personal life ordered as you like it.

I think that if we wish to "respect others" and divest ourselves of ego and self-seeking, then we need to take ourselves out of the question. Both sides. Dropping the issue -- or refusing to take it up -- out of consideration for the other person doesn't seem like respect to me: it's the kind of forbearance you would give to the infirm, or weak. It's an expectation that they can't take themselves out of the issue, and just look at it for truth, because it's really about them.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | March 7, 2010 1:39 AM

Paul: Thanks for your reply. I think you are reading a bit too much into my 'funny' comments. I'm not endorsing Miller's "argument" regarding quantum indeterminacy.

As presented in 'Finding Darwin's God', it's offered as a thought experiment about how an immanent God could interact with creation without leaving any detectable evidence. Like many readers of Miller's book, I found that bit anticlimactic and terribly unsatisfying.

My point has been to protest that the charges of 'logical fallacy' and 'intellectual dishonesty' are overstated. As I read the original argument as presented in 'Finding Darwin's God', I do not find that it rises to the level of a fallacy nor do I detect signs of intellectual dishonesty. The Boston Phoenix piece, however, understandably exercises our suspicions in this area due to its author's decision to deliberately exclude a balanced treatment of Miller's views by Prof. Myers and Coyne.

That's disappointing, of course. Perhaps, as one commenter at Dr. Coyne's site suggested, that author (David Scharfenberg) is angling for a Templeton Fellowship. You might be interested to learn that Scharfenberg has written a few public pieces about the need to (get this) to subsidize a dying breed, journalists such as himself. Who knows? Perhaps he's taking his own advice to the next level!

Anyway, with respect to your bolded questions...I mean, obviously, we can treat the heliocentric view of the solar system as something so well-established that, in the words of S.J. Gould it would be perverse to treat otherwise. You seem to feel that this is such a great rhetorical strategem that you are concerned I might dodge it. Well, I gave the answer that any sensible person would. Are you surprised? How does this impel any conclusion regarding Miller's alleged scientific misconduct?

As to the next question..."Isn't it a bad, unscientific and even antiscientific move to explain away scientific facts with contrived unfalsifiable weirdness like that, in order to shield points of theology from falsification?"

Well, sure. But, what are the scientific facts that Miller is allegedly explaining away with quantum indeterminacy? As I read it, he's not explaining away the quantum itself, which he treats as a real natural phenomena. He's using it as an example of the limits of our knowledge, and how his version of God might be operating behind the scenes. I mean, it may seem contrived to you, and it's certainly unfalsifiable. No argument there. But the theology in question is already shielded. It doesn't need Miller's thought experiment to be non-falsifiable.

Along the same vein, you ask: "Isn't Miller's apologetics doing the same basic thing---contorting both science and theology to protect theological claims from scientific refutation?"

This strikes me as muddled. I'm not sure that a few isolated comments by a well-known scientist that strike a religion-friendly tone rise to the level of apologetics, which as I understand it is a branch of Christian theology. If I perceived his work largely in such a light, it wouldn't hold much use for me and I would join you in condemning its' misapplication. But, as I've written previously, I'm not persuaded that Miller's argument as presented in 'Finding Darwin's God' is evidence of any bad faith on his part.

Again, what science is being contorted here? Is Miller's description of quantum indeterminacy inaccurate? And what are the supposed theological claims that he is 'shielding' from scientific refutation? Paul, if they are theological claims, chances are they can't be refuted by scientific investigation and nothing you or I or Ken Miller has to say on that point is going to change that fact, one way or the other.

Since that is manifestly the case, what do partisans here hope to gain by questioning Drl Miller's motives? Doesn't it make more sense to point out the logical reasons why we might find his argument with respect to QM unsatisfactory, and leave it at that?

Posted by: John Morales | March 7, 2010 2:39 AM

Scott @194,

Doesn't it make more sense to point out the logical reasons why we might find his argument with respect to QM unsatisfactory, and leave it at that?

Only if you feel that the basis on which it's unsatisfactory (that is, it's an argument intended to reconcile the Christian deity and its miracles with science by excluding such from testability) is of no significance.

"A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution" is a significantly different subtitle to 'A Person's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution', with (presumably) intended connotations.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 7, 2010 10:36 AM

Scott Hatfield,
First, I do not impugn Miller's bona fides. I do however think the he is taking a fundamentally unscientific if not anti-scientific attitude in trying to explain an unknown (how divine will might manifest itself) in terms of an unknowable (indeterminacy at the quantum level).

What is more, I think that his idea of how quantum indeterminacy works is fundamentally flawed. Isn't he in effect introducing God as a hidden variable in quantum mechanics? Now granted, God could be a "global" hidden variable rather than a local hidden variable, but I still think it would be extremely difficult to reproduce the results of quantum mechanics if such tampering exists at the quantum mechanical level (ala Bell's inequalities). It seems to me that a deity would have to fudge the results only when nobody was looking--and I would think such a deceitful god would be unacceptable for theological reasons.

Frankly, I find Leigh's pink fluffy God a little easier to stomach as it is a subjective conception and so not jamming its thumbs into the celestial clockwork all the time. Ultimately, I think Kierkegaard's belief as an act of will is the only way to justify a belief in God. Does it make you a better person. This is purely subjective. However, based on my survey of Christendom, I would have to pronounce in the negative for the vast majority of Xtians.

Posted by: Sastra | March 7, 2010 2:18 PM

a_ray_in_dilbert_space #198 wrote:

Ultimately, I think Kierkegaard's belief as an act of will is the only way to justify a belief in God. Does it make you a better person. This is purely subjective.

Ah, but that's just the problem: from within the framework of fideism, this epistemically unjustified "belief as an act of will" is an objective virtue, just in itself. This virtue is not necessarily connected to the behavior it later inspires, treating each other well. You could do that, anyway.

The merit implied in Having Faith (and being the kind of person who Has Faith) is presumably how and why God created a world where amputees do not heal when you pray for them, and God hides itself in quantum indeterminacy. If God's existence were as unambiguous and obvious as the existence of trees, then believing that God exists would show no merit. Instead, this is how God can tell those who are sensitive and accepting of a loving, good God apart from those who are not. The will to believe -- the choice to believe -- is THE litmus test, for the most important test there can be.

Can you remain loyal to God, by believing it exists? Or will you betray your highest calling, chicken out, abandon your best nature, and think only of yourself and Lower Things?

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Really.

Right -- that so works. I do think this is bound to spill into a folk rule-of-thumb on how people can tell those who are trustworthy and meritous, from those who aren't -- even with liberal sophisticates. And that's what we see. What's wrong with atheists? From the standpoint of the Millerian Moderate Middle, it's not their reasoning, or their conclusion. It comes down to {{{{LOVE}}}}.

Who wouldn't rather just be wrong?

I suspect that the only way to avoid this condemnation, is to do as the Good Leigh is apparently doing: belief in God doesn't matter, because God doesn't care if you believe in Him, because God doesn't matter. I think it's going to be hard to walk the tightrope between that viewpoint, and God being the mostest importantest and impressivest thing ever in the whole wide world and beyond, amen.

Posted by: Kagehi | March 7, 2010 2:52 PM

Ok... Glad I kept this thread open in my browser. There is no greater laugh I have had this week than Leigh Williams positing that his personal version of God is, while directed at the real world, basically indistinguishable from my being a follower of Brell Serilis, and thus, in that context, angry at how badly Kobolds and other Serilian races are treated in Everquest 2, while playing that game... My only question has got to be.. If you are going to construct one, why construct one that a) lends credence to some of the most egregiously stupid people on the planet at the moment, and b) which already has a lot of silly mythology behind it, which automatically muddies the waters, when talking to anyone about it? A desire to be "with the in crowd"? A fear of making one up that will be laughed at, because everyone will know its made up? Complete disinterest that, without getting you to admit the construct, everyone will assume its actually the same god as the local church's? I don't get it. As silly as it is, in as much as it was created to mock other religions, why would something like the FSM not make more sense? Because you can't pin it on some, highly probably, mythological figure, who was also "invented" to promote a new religion? You couldn't find some other ancient god to pick, who might not have been carrying around as much baggage?

This is just... very odd. Not in the least since, personally, I can't imagine indulging in such fantasy "in the real world", the same why I do in at least one semi-Roleplay setting, one "real" Roleplay setting, and not at all in a third (where my corporation actually takes the active stance that, more or less, "the only real immortality comes from a jump clone vat, the only soul the data in the networks, so its the data, and the technology we must protect from the religious idiots, who might destroy it"). I don't know.. Maybe I have always just been too down to earth, so have never made up "imaginary friends", which I didn't a) know where imaginary, b) know where not real, and c) knew where myself, talking to myself, so shouldn't be attributed values, such as, "Yesterday I talked to god, or Mark Twain, or the guy down the street that died last week, because I didn't have anyone better to imagine talking to." Just... to me, quite bizarre.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 7, 2010 4:09 PM

Knockgoats and Sastra,

Kierkegaard is an interesting read--particularly "Fear and Trembling," which is a meditation on the story of Abraham and Isaac. In it, ol' Soren views the faith of Abraham--faith that would move him to kill his own son--as a terrible thing (terrible in the sense of invoking terror). He doesn't seem to pass judgment on whether such a faith is a good thing, per se, merely that it is powerful. And for the time, Kierkegaard's unapologetic rejection of apologetics is refreshing

Whether we admit it or not, I think that there are some things we have to take on faith. As a personal example, consider the fate of the human race as it faces threats of climate change, overpopulation, resource depletion, etc. Those of us who are trying to get humans to see reason have to at times ask ourselves if it's worth it. In the climate wars, I have faced personal harassment and even threats.

At times I have to wonder if the extinction of the human species is really a bad thing. And since I have no children, I have no personal stake in the continued existence of humanity or human civilization once I am dead. And yet, I am human. Both my training and my nature as a social animal would make it unethical to try and avert what will undoubtedly be great suffering if we proceed on our current course.

Humanity has certainly given me no reason to be optimistic about its survival in the long term, nor to be enthusiastic that such survival would even be a good thing. I don't see a choice other than to take it as an article of faith that perhaps humanity is worth working to save, whether this is possible or not.

I'd be perfectly happy if you could provide some other rationale, as faith is contrary to my nature. I have not, however, been able to get beyond it in this case.

Posted by: Knockgoats | March 7, 2010 4:18 PM

a_ray,
I don't think I get your point. As you say, if we proceed on our present course, there will undoubtedly (well, very likely, maybe Jesus or the Benevolent Aliens or Its Imminence The Singularity will come and safe us) be great suffering. Why do you need any justification for trying to avoid that? As for the more distant future, none of us can know what will happen, so there's no point worrying about it; we can see far enough to have a good idea what needs to be done.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 7, 2010 4:55 PM

Knockgoats,
Well, first, I won't be here when the caca really hits the fan. I have no children who will suffer.

And one could argue that humanity in aggregate has brought a future of great suffering and ultimately extinction upon itself. So, what distinguishes between the actions of someone fighting to try and get humanity to come to its senses and someone who merely decides to develop, say, a strain of vaccine resistant smallpox to bring about the end sooner and limit suffering to a few weeks rather than a couple of generations?

One could argue that the latter action would minimize damage to the ecosystem, but most of us would dismiss it as monstrous. How could this be unless we take it on faith--against mounting evidence--that the continuance of human civilization is a good thing?

Posted by: Knockgoats | March 7, 2010 5:24 PM

For the purposes of doing science, all faith-based, evidence-free positions should be discarded. - Scott Hatfield, OM

That sentence really is much better without the first clause.

Posted by: Knockgoats | March 7, 2010 5:50 PM

We need SC,OM's standard link to the argumnet that it is a moral duty to adjust your beliefs to the evidence - that it is actually unethical to have faith. I need to go to bed - anyone remember the link?

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 7, 2010 6:12 PM

Damn, SC, that's one big ass thread.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 7, 2010 6:27 PM

ARIDS: "How could this be unless we take it on faith--against mounting evidence--that the continuance of human civilization is a good thing?"

Knockgoats: "Respect for others' preferences."

Well, it's the unrealistic preferences of others that is jeopardizing the continued viability of human civilization, is it not? So, I still have the problem of why I should devote my blood, sweat and tears toward preservation of human civilization, when 1)humans are bringing this fate on themselves; 2)humans are doing untold harm to global ecology; 3)the likelihood of success is remote; and 4)I derive no personal benefit and experience significant sacrifice in doing so. This is not something that I think can be justified rationally.

Posted by: Kagehi | March 7, 2010 8:53 PM

A similar argument was brought up with respect to wages in the last negotiation with the company I work at (several others where in similar negotiation). The result of such brain dead thinking was a) the company whose union folded because of it now has 100% of their employees, under management level, working minimum wage, b) our union was able to keep existing wages, but the company 1) extended the time needed to gain increases, and 2) declared certain employees as "intended to be temp positions, therefor they will never receive a wage increase, unless the fed/state increases the minimum wage.

Basically, the, "I have mine, and won't live long enough to see the consequence.", mentality screwed **everyone** at one company out of having enough to live off of, and rendered the other an impossible place to seek work (we have probably 1% turnover at the store, per year, not including seasonal jobs, so... there is ***no*** such thing as "moving on to another department or pay scale"). Logic would dictate that those of us that *do* have a stake in the matter do away with the people that believe they don't, if you get right down to "justifying things rationally". Just saying...

Oh, and its also the same illogic applied to right wingers/libertarians for cutting their own taxes, cutting funding of social programs, then insisting that, since they don't use X, Y or Z service, nor plan to, nor expect to, they shouldn't have to pay into them. It is *not* a logical position at all, especially since the same logic, had it been applied *before* you where born, would, potentially, have you living in places that are toxic, eating toxic foods, taking toxic "buy at your own risk" medicines, and many other things, which individuals, groups, corporations, and even other governments, looking for a place to dump their waste, have done in the past. Such short sighted thinking leads people to make short sighted choices, and all you have to do is ask someone that lived near one of the rivers in Europe that ***caught fracking fire***, what they think of, "Why should I worry about what won't effect me?"

Because, you cannot **rationally** say that you are 100% certain that something that won't get done, because you and others don't feel they have a stake in it at all, won't directly effect you. In fact, you have to be blind to not see "some" things, like water standards, where it would be, if someone else hadn't figured that how much arsenic and other things where in it, **mattered** to more than the guy able to afford to live by a well, and have his own tests run.

Rational? Not by any standard most people apply, or have, since they started building cities, instead of guarding their private spring, while living in mud huts, using primitive spears.

Posted by: paulmurray | March 7, 2010 11:18 PM

"Suppose that it was common knowledge that if you ... prayed deeply, all of a sudden, your limb would grow back, ... What would that do to moral independence?"

Yup, I can just imagine - if that really were the case - deeply religious people all over the world thinking it was just awful.

One wonders, then: why they do routinely engage in petitionary prayer at all, if it would be so terrible should God answer it?

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 8, 2010 7:37 PM

PZ said:

Nowhere anywhere in the article is any reasonable support for the notion of a god, nor especially of any peculiarly Catholic deity. Of course there isn't, because he doesn't have any.

It's funny that you think he cannot have any reasonable support for the notion of God when - in reality - your position (that there is no God) is the unreasonable one.

You (I assume) would like to think that everything is reducible to matter. But how does that explain the existence of frogs, rocks and trees? What are the specific properties of matter that determine whether this bit of matter becomes a frog, that bit of matter becomes a rock, and another bit becomes a tree?

That these things cannot be explained by appeal to matter alone is sufficient to necessitate that there exists something outside of matter that determines what matter does.

That "something" we call God.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 9, 2010 12:21 AM

That "something" we call God

You're a deist?

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 9, 2010 12:06 PM

The physical properties of matter determine what matter does.

So the physical properties of the matter in me are different from the physical properties of the matter that makes up the rest of the Earth?

How so?

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 9, 2010 12:56 PM

Daniel says, "That these things cannot be explained by appeal to matter alone is sufficient to necessitate that there exists something outside of matter that determines what matter does."

Um, actually, we can. In fact, a lot of the properties of the variety of matter we call "life" can be explained just by looking at the properties of the carbon atom. Now add hydrogen to carbon, and you get a whole new type of chemical bonding that explains more. Oxygen and Nitrogen--still more.

More and more, Daniel, we know how genes turn on and off, how enzymes turn our food into energy, how our thoughts form and propagate into movement and on and on.

And YOU, unfortunately are missing it all because you insist on explaining everything with "GODDIDIT". Sad.

Posted by: RickR | March 9, 2010 1:10 PM

I'm not familiar with the Argument from Frogs.

I love you, Sastra.

Posted by: negentropyeater | March 9, 2010 1:23 PM

I'm not familiar with the Argument from Frogs.

Don't worry, it's about the same as the argument from Walruses :

1. a walrus is different from a king or a cabbage or a shoe.
2. therefore God exists

Posted by: Sastra | March 9, 2010 3:09 PM

Daniel Smith #233 wrote:

So what is it?

Chance and necessity.

I'm not sure how far down you want to go. Physics, chemistry, interactions ... You seem to be asking a science question, but it's very vague.

Is this going to end up with Platonic forms? Or "X is the way it is, because someone wanted it to be that way, and not some other way." Willpower is not a fundamental cosmic force.

Posted by: CJO | March 9, 2010 3:19 PM

Exactly! There is nothing in the properties of matter itself that explains that organization.

You're missing the point. Patterns of organization, flows of energy through matter, have properties also. You seem to be appealing to the fallacy of composition.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | March 9, 2010 3:36 PM

What causes some carbon to become people and other carbon to become dirt?

How are humans able to consume the grains and fruits of plants that grow in dirt?

God is in the digestive system.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | March 9, 2010 3:42 PM

My gut tells me so!

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 9, 2010 3:48 PM

Exactly! There is nothing in the properties of matter itself that explains that organization.

There's nothing intrinsic to matter per se that directly explains any particular organization per se---only the capacity to be organized in a variety of ways, if the conditions are right.

In that sense, looking at the properties of matter doesn't tell you why, for example, you might have a river, or an eroded hillside, much less life and such.

For that, you have to look at the history of how it came to be that way, e.g., with gravity causing water to flow downhill, with many consequences.

No magic there. There's no "extra" thing that explains organization, and none is needed.

Complex things emerge from the interactions of simpler things, by boring mechanical regularities.

Pretty simple stuff will result in life and intelligence, in a very tiny fraction of places in the universe, given simple things interacting in simple ways for a very, very long time. Most places, the conditions aren't right for that, and you don't get such complex patterns emerging.

It's not magic, or imposed from outside, or difficult to explain in a general way.

I'm curious what you're doing here. Are you trying to convince us that there's some magical shaping force that turns matter into life, or something like that? If so, we can recommend a few of books that will disabuse you in a hurry.

Or are you really just asking sincere questions, because you know no science? In that case, too, those books would be informative.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 9, 2010 6:46 PM

Chance and necessity.
How about environmental interaction? Location? Proximity to other elements? Chemistry? etc..

None of this explains why nature is anything other than randomness and chaos.

Instead big chunks of nature are observed to reliably tend towards certain ends as if guided to do so.

Is this going to end up with Platonic forms?

Plato was right (about that anyway.)

Willpower is not a fundamental cosmic force.

No? The bulk of nature is observed to reliably tend towards certain ends. Science has documented this repeatedly (indeed science would be impossible if it weren't so.) How can intentionality, purpose, goal-directedness, or "willpower" be ruled out? Especially when the alternative explains nothing!

since we can take some silicon and turn it into a water glass and some silicon and turn it into a microprocessor, does that mean humans are god?

It shows how intentionality, purpose, goal-directedness, and willpower affects matter.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | March 9, 2010 7:01 PM

Methinks that Daniel, my brother, has had a serious break with reality.

So is it true that like attracts like?

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 9, 2010 7:10 PM

Would it be fair to summaries this as the 'stuff is; therefore, God' argument?

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 9, 2010 7:26 PM

It certainly looks like a modified form of generally absolutist presuppositional apologetics.

Ah, I thought I could smell something.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 9, 2010 7:29 PM

You can't WILL change
Sure you can. You just "willed" that your fingers change positions in order to type that reply.

Your will affected matter.

Wonderful i'nit!

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 9, 2010 7:42 PM

Get the fuck out of here. I never expected to met an actual vitalist.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 9, 2010 7:54 PM

If everything in the universe is the result of "intentionality, purpose, goal-directedness, or "willpower"", how would you know that anything wasn't the result of this intention?

I never said "everything in the universe is the result of intentionality, purpose, goal-directedness, or willpower", nor do I believe that.

The second part of your question is interesting however as it brings up the issue of "the good". If we can discern intentionality in nature, then we can infer that a standard exists by which to objectively judge the level of intentionality in a given object. That standard is "the standard of goodness". We use this objective standard everyday. A doctor might tell you that your back is "bad", or that your heart is "good". This presuppose a standard of excellence for hearts and backs against which we judge the individual instances. Note that this is not a subjective opinion but rather an objective comparison based on observed traits. We can rationally determine what a "good heart" or a "good back" is based on our observations of the design and function of hearts and backs.

So it is not that "everything is the product of intentionality", but rather that nature reveals an intentionality and standard of form for many things against which we can objectively weigh their adherence and determine their level of "goodness".

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 9, 2010 8:08 PM

Why should we expect nature to be random and chaotic?

Why shouldn't we?

We have no grounds at all to expect this to be so.

We don't?

Order is naturally emergent

It is? Why?

stability much more stable than instability.

That goes without saying.

We shouldn't expect to see a random chaotic universe for two reasons: firstly that we should see structure because structure is more stable than non-structure,

Why does matter care about stability and structure?

and secondly that if there were no order then we wouldn't be here.

There you go! Case closed I guess.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 9, 2010 8:24 PM

I never said "everything in the universe is the result of intentionality, purpose, goal-directedness, or willpower", nor do I believe that.

Ah, so I misunderstood your essentialism as being universal.

Very well, then.

So it is not that "everything is the product of intentionality", but rather that nature reveals an intentionality and standard of form for many things against which we can objectively weigh their adherence and determine their level of "goodness".

So salmonella, cholera, the Plasmodium and Trichinella parasites, and many other disease microbes and parasites, which excel at making people sick, often even to the point of death, also reveal such intentionality and standard of form?

If not, why not?

=========

The fact that we can logically distinguish between these things tells us something too - namely that both exist, and nature definitely leans heavily towards the "being guided" side.

This is a false inference, or non-sequitur.

=========

Why should we expect nature to be random and chaotic?

Why shouldn't we?

Because the universe certainly appears to operate by generally consistent rules. Since those rules are not themselves the result of "intentionality" -- as you agree above -- the resulting behavior would not be random and chaotic, but would follow those generally consistent rules.

Order is naturally emergent

It is? Why?

Because of those generally consistent rules that everything follows.

and secondly that if there were no order then we wouldn't be here.

There you go! Case closed I guess.

Did you not agree that not everything is the result of intentionality, purpose, goal-directedness, or willpower? It therefore follows that not all order must be the result of intentionality, purpose, goal-directedness, or willpower.

QED.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 9, 2010 8:34 PM

Daniel,
Nature's intentionality towards us: It's trying to kill us--viruses, bacteria, toxins, accidents, fire...all trying to turn us into worm food. The End

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 9, 2010 8:40 PM

Why shouldn't we?

We don't?

It is?

Why?

That goes without saying.

Why does matter care about stability and structure?

There you go! Case closed I guess.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 9, 2010 9:00 PM

Why should there be a why?

Yet there are those who engage in promiscuous teleology - they would argue that there is rain for watering plants. Yet rain doesn't exist to water plants, rain just happens to be a natural emergent property of atoms and plants have evolved to take advantage of such a thing. At no stage is a teleological explanation needed, yet our minds are wired to expect one. In other words, as much as we would like to think there is rain to water plants - all we are doing is putting our cognitive bias on the universe.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 9, 2010 9:22 PM

Ah, now we've moved on to 'I can ask an endless succession of why questions; therefore, God exists' approach.

Can we call this the interrogative ad infinitum fallacy?

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 9, 2010 11:51 PM

You (I assume) would like to think that everything is reducible to matter. But how does that explain the existence of frogs, rocks and trees?

What are the specific properties of matter that determine whether this bit of matter becomes a frog, that bit of matter becomes a rock, and another bit becomes a tree?

That's a pretty important point to take in. You are here because your parents had sex. They didn't build your structure, they merely provided the genetic instructions. They may have known that having sex would lead to offspring, they may have intended that. But your form was not determined by their intentions, but the fact that you exist was. Think about that for a moment, your existence is not dependent on the process by which you exist to know anything about how to make you. Now dogs may or may not know they are having sex, yet they still have dog offspring. Frogs probably don't know that they're even having sex, yet they still have frog offspring. Trees do not know anything about their reproductive process, yet still produce tree offspring.

It's important to understand evolution in order to understand life. Life doesn't make any sense without evolution; the process of replication means that form is inevitable. Once you understand that, you understand why looking for intentionality makes no sense - and that form is emergent from process. If you can grasp that, then perhaps you can move away from promiscuous teleology and towards an understanding of nature. You're seeing the world as a child sees it, it's time to put away childish notions and become a man.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 10, 2010 2:19 PM

Daniel Smith:

But process is not reducible to matter. Matter does not determine process, otherwise all matter of a certain type would initiate the same process. No, it's the other way around - process determines the organization of matter.

Daniel, you evidently know essentially zero science---no physics, no biology, etc.---or are being disingenuous, or something.

You should at least understand two very basic things about the scientific worldview.

1. Higher-level entities and events (such as animals and life) are made out of lower-level entities and events (such as molecules and chemical reactions). This doesn't require magic or guidance.

2. Minor random small-scale differences in initial states of things can, under some circumstances, cascade into quite major differences in higher-level and larger-scale things. (E.g., a butterfly flapping its wings, or not, might rarely end up determining whether a hurricane forms and destroys a city, and a single utterly random quantum event might, very rarely, determine whether the butterfly flaps its wings and all that happens.) There is no magic or guidance required for that to happen.

3. All the interesting high-level phenomena that we observe, e.g., galaxies, stars, planets, life, ecosystems, minds, beliefs, emotions, social structures, religion, etc. appear to be the result of that sort of thing, without any magic or guidance required.

If you don't understand these things, you do not understand the scientific worldview that you seem to be criticizing.

You also keep making the same dumbass assertions about the requirements for guidance, something extra being needed besides "matter," etc., which are well known in light of science to be false.

Given that we're mostly scientists and scientifically-inclined people, you are just being an annoying troll demonstrating your utter ignorance of the most basic and important facts, or perhaps your sheer trollery, framing things with evidently false presuppositions so that you can make false high-level claims that may seem to the utterly ignorant to make some kind of sense.

Stop it. Learn some science. Read a couple of reasonable, popular books like Stuart Kauffman's At Home in the Universe and Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker so that you get some clue of what the fuck you're talking about, and don't just keep spouting patent falsehoods. Then get back to us.

Or if you have already read similar books, and understood them, then act like it. Stop making high-level assumptions that most scientists think are patently false, and begging the questions relevant to your preferred conclusions.

If you've actually read such books, and not understood them, then start asking real, sincere questions rather than "gotcha" questions with presuppositions we know to be false.

If you've read such books, and been unable to understand them, then come way, way down off your high horse, and try to convey what it is you didn't get, such that if somebody cares enough, they might be willing to explain that aspect of the scientific worldview to you.

If you can't do those things, please go the fuck away.

You seem to have a case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, or a penchant for dishonesty, or some of each. (If you don't know what Dunning-Kruger is, google it, and seriously consider that we think it applies to you.)

So please, before expecting anybody to answer your silly bogus "questions," tell us a few things:

1. What's your real point? Is it that God must exist? That seems obvious, but I thought I'd check.

2. Have you ever read a book on evolution by natural selection written by a scientist or philosopher who believes it's true?

3. If not, why should we think you're actually interested in the subject, or intellectually honest enough to be interested in what our views actually are, before you come telling us we're wrong?

I suggest that if Daniel won't answer these questions, everybody should stop feeding the troll, right now, and if he persists in trolling, he should be banned.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 10, 2010 3:16 PM

You still cannot explain, by appeals to material things, how matter comes to be consistently organized for the functions it is known to perform.

Actually, we can: the process of genetic change and inheritance, reproduction, and differential survival, is exactly that explanation. You have not shown how that explanation is incorrect; you have merely asserted that it is.

I note that you still haven't responded to my question @#260.

Are the organisms consistently organized for the functions that are known to kill millions of humans the result of some "immaterial" thing?

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 10, 2010 3:24 PM

Matter does not determine process, otherwise all matter of a certain type would initiate the same process.

It does. What do you think a physical or chemical reaction is, if not that "same process" being initated by the material components involved?

No, it's the other way around - process determines the organization of matter.

No, you're still doing it wrong. "Matter" and "process" are inextricably intertwined; each is capable of causing a feedback loop into the other. That feedback loop may well terminate for simpler "processes" (chemical reactions), but so far, the "process" of the biological evolution of life has been continuing for a long time.

So you're left with something immaterial organizing matter and no material explanation for the various organizations we see.

Chemical reactions are only "immaterial" if you insist that the physical properties of atoms that undergo the reactions are not material, which is incoherent.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 10, 2010 3:35 PM

It DOES require guidance to put a car together though.

Posted by: John Morales | March 10, 2010 4:33 PM

Daniel,

So you're left with something immaterial organizing matter and no material explanation for the various organizations we see.

and again

You still cannot explain, by appeals to material things, how matter comes to be consistently organized for the functions it is known to perform.

Like, say, a snowflake? :)

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 10, 2010 4:51 PM

William Paley gave the most famous presentation of the watchmaker argument in 1802. Unfortunately for Paley, David Hume refuted the argument in a book published in 1748. That's right, Daniel, Paley's argument was answered 52 years before it was made.

The watchmaker argument only works if everything ordered is ordered by design. However, we know there are systems in nature that are ordered but not designed. For example, salt in water will form crystals as the water evaporates. Further, if we assume that order can only come by design, and design only by the order of intellect, then if we posit that God designed it, then he is ordered, and thus requires a designer as well.

Posted by: negentropyeater | March 10, 2010 5:05 PM

You still cannot explain, by appeals to material things, how matter comes to be consistently organized for the functions it is known to perform.

Maybe if you reformulated it this way:

explain, by appeals to material thingsphysical laws, how matter comes to be consistently organized for the functions it is known to perform.

1. start learning about the time dependent Schrödinger equation for a simple atomic system
2. move up to condensed matter physics
3. move up to statistical mechanics
4. move up to inorganic and organic chemistry
5. move up to biology

then you'll understand how physical laws ewplain how matter comes to be consistently organised for the functions it is known to perform.

Everything can be derived from those God damned solutions to the Schrödinger equation.

Posted by: John Morales | March 10, 2010 5:22 PM

Daniel:

Yes, the fifth of his five proofs for the existence of God in his Summa Theologica

That would be why I directed you to teleonomy above.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 10, 2010 5:31 PM

Daniel:

Why do you people think I'm talking about, or disputing, evolution?

Because you appear not to understand it, e.g., that it is not teleological, and that its significance is largely that it explains the appearance of teleology while showing that many inferences of teleology are wrong.

Why do you think I'm using Paley's argument?

It makes you sound like a dishonest asshole. If you're not one, start spelling out what you're saying, clearly, rather than asking "questions" that seem to rhetorically imply your preferred answers while embodying false presuppositions.

I'm attempting to use (rather feebly I must admit) Aquinas' teleological argument. His five proofs of God are the basis for my position.

Holy crap. Kant and Hume disposed of the Five Ways about two centuries ago. Have you got something new to add?

If not, at least pick an argument and spell it out.

The progress of science over the last several hundred years has largely been a matter of debunking teleological reasoning, with evolution by natural selection and emergent complexity (a la chaos theory and complexity theory) completely obviating any need for teleological explanation of natural phenomena, including life, minds, and religion.

If you don't understand that, you don't understand the scientific world view.

If you don't understand the scientific worldview, then stop acting like you think you do.

Absolutely do not treat the Five Ways as something you can insinuate the truth of, since they're all generally agreed to be bogus by the preponderance of philosophers, scientists, and especially philosophers of science.

And seriously, I hate to be rude, but...

ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTIONS, ASSHOLE.

Have you ever read even one book on evolution by a scientist or philosopher who thinks its true?

If you can actually understand evolution and Aquinas---which I doubt, from the way you talk---then you should easily be able to understand The Blind Watchmaker, and I'd recommend that you read Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

If not, why should we think you're actually interested in the subject, or intellectually honest enough to be interested in what our views actually are, before you come telling us we're wrong?

Posted by: Sastra | March 10, 2010 5:45 PM

Daniel Smith #285 wrote:

I'm attempting to use (rather feebly I must admit) Aquinas' teleological argument. His five proofs of God are the basis for my position.

Aquinas' 5 Ways are all basically versions of the Cosmological Argument: First Mover, a first efficient cause, a necessary being, a cause of perfection, and a director of natural things to their ends. There's not just a single thing wrong with them -- there are many things wrong with them.

If nothing else, they're scientifically naive. They rest on an armchair Aristotlean folk understanding of physics and motion that was already in trouble back with the Greeks.

And that last one -- which is what you seem to be pushing in particular -- begs the question, by assuming that everything has a natural "end" to fulfill.

Sure, a Thomist can accept evolution. A Thomist can accept large swathes of modern cosmology too. But he or she then has to abandon their science and shift the way they think about reality, and return to pre-scientific intuitions. It won't work.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 10, 2010 6:17 PM

Why do you think I'm using Paley's argument?

Because it sounds just like the same argument.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 10, 2010 7:05 PM

Why do you people think I'm talking about, or disputing, evolution?
(I'm not)

It's true that you've been terribly vague, and not particularly coherent, but your vagueness and incoherency certainly has not excluded disputing evolution.

And when you gave examples, you offered biological structures like the heart and the back, which means that you are necessarily discussing evolved organs, and trying to say something about them -- it's not at all clear exactly what, though, if you claim to not be disputing evolution.

I'm attempting to use (rather feebly I must admit) Aquinas' teleological argument.

Why do you think you can use an antiquated argument that embodies philosophical confusion about everything, and not end up disputing everything involving empirical science, which of course necessarily includes evolution?

1: Some thing are better than other things for some given purpose.
2: We can know or discover what those things are and classify them in accordance to their functionality
3: Therefore, God exists.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 10, 2010 8:36 PM

Evolution is not the issue. Please stop trying to make this about evolution, complexity, or any of the other ID buzzwords. I'm not in that camp (at least not fully). My arguments are more basic and apply to all of matter - not just life and complexity.

The issue for me is whether or not the organization of matter which we observe can be reducible to material causes. We know that things that are material (matter), material-dependent (energy) and immaterial (time, space, mathematics, etc.) exist. You all seem to think these things are sufficient to explain the organization of matter. I don't. You have yet to elucidate a reason why the properties of matter favor the organization we observe. Your reasoning seems to be that since we can point to forces at work in nature, those forces must be what organizes nature. It's akin to pointing at the forces at work in a car and concluding that those forces organized the car (and no, my position has nothing to do with complexity. It could just as easily be a table.)

As for the other four ways, there is no denying that the science of the day was not as advanced as the science of today, that does not however negate the metaphysical arguments made.

First way: The argument from motion (or change). Things are observe to move (or change). That movement or change is caused by another. There cannot be an infinite regress of movers (else there cannot be a first mover to start the whole thing). Therefore there must be an unmoved mover. The only weakness I can identify with this argument is the "movement or change is caused by another" part. It could be said that animals move themselves, so this negates that. But are animals really moving themselves? Or is one part moving another? (Which puts the argument back on track.)

Second way: The argument from (efficient) causality. Nothing can be the efficient cause of itself. ("Efficient cause" being an immediate cause as opposed to an historical cause, IOW that which is causing something to exist right now.) There cannot be an infinite regress of efficient causes (for the same reasons cited above). Therefore there must be a first efficient cause. I find no weakness in this argument.

Third way: The argument from contingency. There are things which are observed to be contingent. Nothing contingent could exist forever (by definition). If everything were contingent, then it is possible that at some time in the past nothing existed - and that would mean that nothing could exist now - which is an absurdity. So there must be something that exists that is not contingent but necessary. For the same reasons as seen in the first two ways, there cannot be an infinite regress of necessary objects so there must be something that has its own necessity. This one loses me a bit when he talks about necessary objects, but the reasoning is still sound as far as I can see.

Fourth way: The argument from degree. That there are observed to be degrees of qualities in beings. Some beings are more or less intelligent, good, true, etc. That there are gradations in these qualities points to there being a maximum intelligence, goodness, trueness, etc. That this argument is about beings at first threw me, especially because he cites the archaic belief of his day that fire was the cause of all hotness. But it is evident from the context that he is not talking about things but about beings.

Many of you claim that these arguments have been refuted. Please tell me (if you can) how a particular argument has been refuted.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 10, 2010 8:58 PM

Daniel Smith,

I'm not overly familiar with the standard responses to your points - though I have no doubt they exist and will be cited before too long - but I have read what you've posted and this one stands out:

That there are gradations in these qualities points to there being a maximum intelligence, goodness, trueness, etc.

Why? You're applying a teleology to things without anything to back it up beyond the bare assertion. The idea of perfection itself is very much a subjective human concept rather than any kind of undeniable fact.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 10, 2010 9:03 PM

Daniel:

Evolution is not the issue. Please stop trying to make this about evolution, complexity, or any of the other ID buzzwords. I'm not in that camp (at least not fully). My arguments are more basic and apply to all of matter - not just life and complexity.

Your reply makes it pretty clear that you do not know what I am talking about. When I mentioned "complexity theory" (and "chaos theory") I was not talking about pseudoscientific ID stuff. I was talking about actual science that you don't appear to know the name of, much less the significance of.

I ask you again

HAVE YOU READ A BOOK ON EVOLUTION BY A SCIENTIST OR PHILOSOPHER WHO BELIEVES IN IT? And if so, which one?

That's a valid question, because you're coming in from left field and wasting our time trying to figure out what you're talking about, and what your background is.

So, for example, if you'd read The Blind Watchmaker, I would have some idea about certain ideas you've been exposed to, like cellular automata and Conway's Game of Life, and could refer to those in answering your other questions, or addressing your apparent misconceptions.

It's a legitimate question. Answer it, please.

I infer that you have not read any books that explain basic complexity theory, like Kauffman's or Prigogene's work. I won't even bother to ask whether that's correct, because I'm pretty sure it is, and I want you to answer the first question

HAVE YOU EVER READ A BOOK ON EVOLUTION BY A SCIENTIST OR PHILOSOPHER WHO BELIEVES IN IT?

Posted by: John Morales | March 10, 2010 9:20 PM

Daniel:

We know that things that are material (matter), material-dependent (energy) and immaterial (time, space, mathematics, etc.) exist.

Your ontology appears muddled; matter and energy are different aspects of mass-energy and have physical existence, categorically different to abstract concepts which you classify as immaterial (e.g. mathematics) and have no physical existence.

You all seem to think these things are sufficient to explain the organization of matter. I don't.

Yes, you argue from incredulity. It's not that you don't concede there's a perfectly natural explanation for things, it's that you don't understand it. So, you invoke an extra (epistemically unwarranted) assumption, to justify your inchoate feeling that agency is responsible for reality.

You have yet to elucidate a reason why the properties of matter favor the organization we observe.

Because if they favoured otherwise, we'd observe otherwise; our conceptualisation of those properties is derived from empiricism.

Many of you claim that these arguments have been refuted. Please tell me (if you can) how a particular argument has been refuted.

Bah. I'll do one:

Third way: The argument from contingency. There are things which are observed to be contingent. [1] Nothing contingent could exist forever (by definition). [2] If everything were contingent, then it is possible that at some time in the past nothing existed - and that would mean that nothing could exist now - which is an absurdity. [3] So there must be something that exists that is not contingent but necessary. [4] For the same reasons as seen in the first two ways, there cannot be an infinite regress of necessary objects so there must be something that has its own necessity.

1. No. Contingent merely means possible but not necessary. It says nothing about duration of existence.
2. You're just asserting at least some things are not contingent¹; you only pretend to infer this from your erroneous [1], but it doesn't follow.
3. Again, you're pretending to infer when you're just restating your assertion at [2].
4. Why can't there be an infinite regress?

--

¹ And poorly at that.
(even if everything were contingent, then it could still be possible that at there was never a time in the past when nothing existed)

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 10, 2010 9:32 PM

Please stop trying to make this about evolution, complexity, or any of the other ID buzzwords. I'm not in that camp (at least not fully). My arguments are more basic and apply to all of matter - not just life and complexity.

But it is the exact same argument. The fact you can't either see this or admit it is telling.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 10, 2010 10:03 PM

Asshole, you ARE making the watchmaker argument. It's not our fault that you're too stupid to realize this.

He really should just read David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion so when we say the arguments were shown to be fallacious some 250 years ago, he could see why.
there is an evident absurdity in pretending to demonstrate a matter of fact, or to prove it by any arguments a priori. Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being, whose existence is demonstrable.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 11, 2010 12:46 AM

Daniel:

Aquinas's first three "ways" are all variants of what's called the Cosmological Argument, which is invalid for a couple of deep reasons.

The basic argument is that every normal thing must have a prior cause, and an infinite regress is impossible, so there must be a first cause that is a special kind of thing, which we call God.

One problem with this is that it's not clear that an infinite regress of causes is any weirder than a first, uncaused cause. It's not clear which we should find more believable.

There are variants of the Cosmological Argument that allow for that. They allow for an infinite regress of causes, but then say that such an infinite regress wouldn't exist without something special outside that infinite regress of normal things and normal causation, to enable it all to exist.

The real underlying question is this: Why is there something rather than nothing at all?

Once you realize that, you can start to see that there's something profoundly weird about the question, which suggests that there's a false presupposition hidden in there, and maybe it's not even a good question.

Part of the argument itself says that every thing has to have a cause distinct from, and in some sense prior to itself. (In the simple first cause argument, it's something that comes earlier in time, and causes the later thing. In other versions, it's some kind of "metaphysical priority"---I can explain that if necessary---but the structural problems are the same.)

The assumption of universal causatiion necessarily breaks down when you talk about literally everything. There is nothing outside of everything to cause it, or it wouldn't be everything.

Causal explanation is always explaining something in terms of something else. Therefore everything can't have a cause, because there's literally nothing else that could be its cause.

No matter how you slice it, you can't get a good answer to this question; a first cause simply makes no causal sense.

An infinite regress does make causal sense in that it explains each thing in terms of something else. (Which is why some philosophers and theologians prefer it.) Unfortunately, it doesn't answer the real underlying question any better than a first cause does---why is there something rather than nothing at all?

Either way, bringing God into it doesn't help a bit.

If God is a literal first cause, in time, it just raises the question of why there was God---which is just a specific version of the general question of why is there something rather than nothing at all---that is, why is there all this stuff, starting with God?

The real question is still there, untouched, and you've just pushed it back a step, not answered it. You're not any closer to understanding why there's anything at all, unless you've got a very good argument about why there's God rather than nothing at all.

(And nobody actually has that. The Ontological Argument is bogus too. The Cosmological Argument thus depends on something like the Ontological Argument---but if you have that, and can make it work, the Cosmological Argument is superfluous. Either way, the Cosmological Argument itself is useless---it's either simply wrong, or question-begging.)

If there's an infinite regress of causes, with no beginning, but God somehow accounts for why that infinite regress has always existed, you have basically the same problem. God may enable the existence of things forever into the past and maybe the future, but now you have to account for God---why has he always been around, and able to do such an amazing thing? What enables God to always have existed? (And what enables that...)

The truth is that asking why is evidently not always a good question. Causal why questions only make sense for particular things, where there can be an answer in terms of other particular things.

They can't possibly make that kind of sense when applied to everything. It's clearly a category mistake to expect an answer to the question "why everything?, because there's nothing else to serve as a possible answer.

Just asking "why everything?" actually rules out the possibility of an answer.

It's a bad question, however reasonable it seems intuitively, based on a false presupposition.

It's like asking "which way is up?" in deep space.

If you're not aware of the relevant physics, you might naively assume that "which way is up?" is always a valid question, anywhere, but it simply isn't, because up necessarily depends on local conditions, and in some places, conditions are such that there can't be an up.

When it comes to everything, it's similarly evident that there can be no why.

Anybody who claims to tell you why there's something rather than nothing at all is either lying to you, or didn't actually understand the question themselves.

Which, if I recall correctly, is what Kant pointed out about Aquinas's first three ways (and a bunch of other variants of the Cosmological argument) in the 18th century.

The Cosmological Argument is long dead, except among apologists, who refuse to really understand the deeply weird question they're pretending to give a sensible answer to.

Posted by: John Morales | March 11, 2010 2:46 AM

Oh boy, Kel.

Many of you claim that these arguments have been refuted. Please tell me (if you can) how a particular argument has been refuted.

Remember that?

Wasn't enough of a Gish Gallop before, now we must refute [checks, giggles] hundreds of proofs?

You bastard! :)

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 11, 2010 2:37 PM

Any chain of causality must ultimately begin with one of three things:

1. An infinite regress.
In which case there really is no beginning.

2. Nothing.
Which means everything came from nothing - a logical absurdity.

3. An eternal, uncaused first cause.
This is the most reasonable of the three IMO.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 11, 2010 2:43 PM

How did your imaginary deity come into being? That is the logical fallacy. You are presupposing an eternal deity with your verbal salad. Already in deep doodoo.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 11, 2010 3:45 PM

This took me way too long to compose. Oh, well. Here it is anyway:

My arguments are more basic and apply to all of matter - not just life and complexity.

Then they apply to evolution as well, as your very disclaimer itself implies. But my counterarguments hold regardless.

We know that things that are material (matter), material-dependent (energy) and immaterial (time, space, mathematics, etc.) exist. You all seem to think these things are sufficient to explain the organization of matter. I don't.

You have not explained why you don't in a clear and coherent way.

You have yet to elucidate a reason why the properties of matter favor the organization we observe.

You have yet to elucidate a reason why we should need a reason.

Scientists are indeed looking at chaos theory and theories of emergence to better explain what you might intend by "organization". Is that in fact what you want?

Your reasoning seems to be that since we can point to forces at work in nature, those forces must be what organizes nature.

It's called "parsimony". Have you in fact heard of it?

It's akin to pointing at the forces at work in a car and concluding that those forces organized the car (and no, my position has nothing to do with complexity. It could just as easily be a table.)

That's a false analogy, either way.

As for the other four ways, there is no denying that the science of the day was not as advanced as the science of today, that does not however negate the metaphysical arguments made.

The problems are not just with their science, but with their logic. Do you understand that the logic is flawed, and that the conclusions are therefore unreasonable? Do you even know what the fallacies being referred to are?

There cannot be an infinite regress of movers (else there cannot be a first mover to start the whole thing). Therefore there must be an unmoved mover.

This assumes its conclusions, twice -- that there cannot be an infinite regress in order to conclude that there must be a "first mover"), and contains a subtle self-contradiction (an "unmoved mover" is an oxymoron).

Besides, from a scientific perspective, the entire argument is a category error: you cannot speak of motion without discussing energy. Everything that moves, ultimately moves because energy is input into it, and in fact, all matter is made of atoms that are moving all the time if they are at a temperature above absolute zero (which they are in most of the universe). And of course, matter can be converted to energy (and vice versa).

Or to put it another way, "motion" is an inherent property of matter.

While all matter and energy can be traced back to the first few microseconds of the Big Bang, we cannot assert with any certainty how that matter and energy arose. We certainly cannot alter the arguments regarding motion above to assert that there cannot be an infinite regress of matter and energy (or something matter-like or energy-like), nor that matter and energy cannot spontaneously occur. See below re virtual particles.

It could be said that animals move themselves, so this negates that. But are animals really moving themselves? Or is one part moving another?

Animals move as the result of differential tissue contraction; chemical energy transformed into mechanical energy. This is pretty basic science, here.

Nothing can be the efficient cause of itself.

This assumes its own conclusion. It's one of those things that looks reasonable, but could not be proven to be true, and could be false in some particular case even if generally true.

One way in particular that it's been shown to be probably false is in spontaneous virtual particle pair production, and in radioactive decay. More generally, it's been suggested that nothingness is unstable.

There cannot be an infinite regress of efficient causes (for the same reasons cited above).

This is invalid, largely for the same reasons I cited above. See also below.

Therefore there must be a first efficient cause.

Which implicitly contradicts the initial premise: A first cause is indistinguishable from something self-caused.

The problem with discussing the very concept of cause is that it implicitly involves time. But asserting that there cannot be an infinite regress of things happening in time (which is what the above assertion amounts to) means that there must have been an absolute t₀. But if there's an absolute t₀, positing a cause before that point implies that something happened before the absolute t₀, which means the t₀ is not in fact absolute but relative. The goalpost shifts back. You've contradicted your initial premise, again.

As best we can tell scientifically, time in our universe itself began with the Big Bang. We cannot say for certain what happened before that, or even if it makes sense to say there was a before. Does time extend back infinitely or loop back on itself? Is there some sort of meta-time and meta-space where universes come into existence and expand? Does the meta-time and meta-space have a beginning, or do they regress infinitely? Are they embedded in a meta-meta-time and meta-meta-space? Does any looping occur at any level? If not, why not?

This is all the sort of speculation that gives cosmologists headaches (and certainly gives me a headache), but you cannot derive conclusions as if you know which cosmological scenario is true, especially when you end up contradicting yourself and using fallacious logic in the context of your chosen scenario.

The argument from contingency.

This looks to me like a convoluted restatement of the previous argument, and which smuggles in circular reasoning again. Is it not the case that a contingent thing is one that is caused? Is it not the case that a necessary thing is one that is uncaused?

The argument from degree. That there are observed to be degrees of qualities in beings. Some beings are more or less intelligent, good, true, etc. That there are gradations in these qualities points to there being a maximum intelligence, goodness, trueness

A potential maximum does not imply that the actual maximum is infinite. Any maximum that actually exists in the real world embodied in a real being is necessarily not infinite.

This is particularly true for vague and relative concepts like "goodness". What exactly does that even mean?

This is even the case for "trueness" itself. Gödel proved that complete knowledge of truth is logically impossible: there are true things which cannot be proven true, and false ones that cannot be proven false. Given that, how is it even possible to know how to define "maximum" trueness, or that something has "maximum" trueness?

And so on.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 11, 2010 4:10 PM

Any chain of causality must ultimately begin with one of three things:

Even the terms "causality" and "begin" have implicit hidden assumptions about time in them. You're trying to argue as though time were a well-defined and well-understood concept. It's not.

1. An infinite regress.
In which case there really is no beginning.

Look more closely at your #3.

2. Nothing.
Which means everything came from nothing - a logical absurdity.

Not at all. What exactly is nothing? As noted @#316 (and by others), it's been suggested that "nothing" is unstable and necessarily produces "something". Perhaps it's not the case that nature abhors a vacuum, but rather that a vacuum, by its nature, abhors itself.

3. An eternal, uncaused first cause.
This is the most reasonable of the three IMO.

How does "eternal" differ from "infinite"? Again, there's an implicit hidden assumption about time in the very word. So too with "uncaused" and "first cause" -- there's that implicit contradiction between your assumed absolute t₀ shifting eternally backwards, or a regress.

And you left out a possibility I suggested above -- not an infinite regress, but a causal temporal loop, or meta-temporal loop. No, I don't know how that would work, but it's at least as reasonable as the other options, which are equally difficult to explain coherently.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 11, 2010 7:45 PM

Where did your "first mover" come from? Assuming an uncaused "first mover" is, as I said previously, special pleading. So you have to show how your "first mover" appears on the scene without being caused by a "zero mover", which we can also call "nothing."

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 12, 2010 8:53 AM

What does "priority" mean if it doesn't mean temporal priority?

The example most often used is that of a man pushing a rock with a stick. The rock is moved by the stick, the stick is moved by the man - all at the same time. The man is the 'first mover', the stick is the 'second mover' and the rock is that whose motion we are seeking to explain.

This is even more confused. As best I can tell, efficient causes are synonymous with what you call accidental/historical causes.

You're confused alright. I explained it (I think) pretty clearly. Go back and re-read what I said.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 12, 2010 9:38 AM

Daniel, how did your deity come into being? It cannot be eternal (presupposed). Try using science, not philosophy. Evidence trumps philosophy every day of the week.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 12, 2010 9:57 AM

Shit, this thing is still going? How much more does it really need to take to show that Aquinas' arguments are no longer relevant than that modern Christian philosophers no longer use them? They have been refuted, they have been refuted for over 250 years at least now. The intellectual realm has moved on and left Aquinas for dead... get over it and move into the 21st century.

Oh and stop making the two egregious fallacies that a) you can prove a priori what is reasoned from a posteriori observations, and b) that if you prove there's a Prime Mover that means that the Prime Mover is the god of the bible. Your entire line of thinking is completely outdated. Like 500 years outdated...

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 12, 2010 2:36 PM

A few thoughts on the "scientific worldview"...

1. Science is limited in its field of study:
Science studies physical, observable phenomena and its effects. It cannot, for instance, investigate the supernatural. Therefore scientific knowledge is a limited form of knowledge and cannot be the only type of knowledge that exists.

2. Scientific knowledge is incomplete:
Science has not discovered everything there is to discover, and there is no guarantee that the scientific knowledge of tomorrow will confirm the scientific knowledge of today - in fact history shows us that the opposite is often likely to be true. Appeals to future knowledge are therefore illegitimate for bolstering the incomplete knowledge we have today.

3. Science is based on metaphysical assumptions:
Science assumes, for example, that the world we observe is real, that we are not just brains in vats. Science also assumes that the laws of physics and chemistry apply universally. Indeed, science would not be possible if it did not make such assumptions. So science itself is based on metaphysics.

4. Scientific observations and results remain the same whether interpreted via a materialist worldview or a theological one:
There is no finding of science that contradicts sound theology.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 12, 2010 4:21 PM

Scientific observations and results remain the same whether interpreted via a materialist worldview or a theological one

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | March 12, 2010 4:39 PM

When has rejecting a natural explanation in favor of a "supernatural" one ever made a positive contribution to our understanding of something?

Posted by: negentropyeater | March 12, 2010 7:15 PM

A few thoughts on the "religious worldview"...

1. Religion has no field of study:
Religion studies npthing. It cannot, for instance, investigate the supernatural. As no religious belief can be justified true belief, religious knowledge is void of any content and can be safely ignored.

2. Religious knowledge is completely void:
Religion has not discovered anything. And there is a guarantee that the religious knowledge of tomorrow will be as void of content as the religious knowledge of today. Appeals to past, present or future religious knowledge are therefore illegitimate for bolstering the inexistant religious knowledge we have today.

3. Religion is based entirely on superstitions and myths

4. Religious observations cannot be verified.
There are no religious superstitions that can be verified empirically. Only theology that makes no empirical claims doesn't contradict science.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 12, 2010 9:42 PM

The difference between science and theology is science is based on evidence while theology is based on opinion and wishful thinking.

If a deity physically intervened in the real world then this intervention could be studied scientifically. There would be evidence of the deity. However deities seem to be reluctant to manifest themselves or their actions in the real world but remain supernatural, they do not leave evidence to be studied. Instead, theologians make up stories and pretend they "understand" their particular deities. For n theologians there are at least n+1 theologies, because theologians do change their opinions occasionally.

Posted by: John Morales | March 13, 2010 8:20 PM

A bit late here, but the concept of simultaneity in the real world is not as simple as the ancients once thought, either.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 13, 2010 11:23 PM

All fields of study that claim not to be so limited are indistinguishable from pure fantasy.

I totally agree (and never claimed otherwise.)
My point was that scientific knowledge is not the only valid knowledge.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 14, 2010 12:11 AM

In order to understand Aquinas' and Aristotle's concept of motion, one must understand Aristotle's actuality and potentiality.

Everything that exists is actual.

In order to change or move it must have the potential to change or to move - it must be able to become something different than it actually is or to move somewhere it actually isn't.

This potential is not some abstract concept (as in "anything we can imagine") but rather real potential - as in "what it can really become" or "where and how it can really move".

For Aristotle and Aquinas then, "motion" is to change from potential to actual and vice versa. So motion is not just about movement but rather about any kind of change.

Also, it must be stressed that nothing can be both actually and potentially the same thing at the same time. One precludes the other. If it is actually one thing, it is not potentially that same thing and if it is potentially one thing, it is not actually that same thing.

Also movement (or change) must be initiated on something that has the potential to move (or change) by something that is actual. Potential cannot move potential. For this reason, it cannot be the same thing that has the potential, else it would be both actually and potentially the same thing at the same time.

This is why Aristotle famously concluded "Everything that moves is moved by another".

Posted by: John Morales | March 14, 2010 12:17 AM

Daniel @343, why should I?

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 14, 2010 12:36 AM

So daniel, why precisely should we care about the philosophical and factually incorrect musings of some dudes from centuries/millenia ago?

they're wrong. why would it matter if their wrongness is internally consistent, complex, and appealing to you?

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 14, 2010 12:40 AM

My point was that scientific knowledge is not the only valid knowledge.it's the only kind we can rightfully call that, since no other form of "knowledge" is reliably distinguishable from fantasy and illusion. You can hardly call something "knowledge" if there's no way of telling whether it's actually real and not-wrong.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 14, 2010 9:16 AM

I seen Daniel is still busy giving philosophers a bad name by attempting bad philosophy. Philosophy without evidence is sophistry. And there is no evidence in Daniel's philosophy. Learn some science. And look at t-shirts that say it all.

Posted by: Philip Legge | March 14, 2010 9:30 PM

Daniel (or should that be Denial?) Smith, are you now trying to argue that everything must have a cause? Fortunately we are not in the 12th century now, and possibly to the discouragement of Acquinas’ mediæval views, we now have observed plenty of examples of acausality in nature, such as radioactive decay or the virtual pair-production of particles and anti-particles. You’re just giving us yet another repetitious version of the same sort of infinite regress represented by Zeno’s paradox, ignorant of any subsequent developments in either mathematics or physics: well in the case of Zeno, guess what happened there.

Modern cosmologists are very far from needing to assert a "first cause" before the earliest known timescale of the Universe, when a massively inflationary process began from highly dense and energetic starting conditions, but the point here is, in some of the theories postulated there is no need for anything to have happened prior - physicists such as Victor Stenger have given examples that sounds rather paradoxical, that not only the universe could have begun out of nothing through a process like quantum pair production, but that such an event would represent a lower energy state (i.e. more probable) than the contrary, that the event never occurs.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 16, 2010 8:45 AM

are you now trying to argue that everything must have a cause?
No. I'm not.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 16, 2010 9:32 AM

Many are simply strawmen - based on caricatures of his arguments. All - thus far - ring hollow.

The best way to convince us of a deity is with hard physical evidence, evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural, origin. Philosophy won't cut the mustard, since the deity in the babble interacted with world, and traces of his doing so should be present in the world, and can be detected with science. A totally philosophical deity isn't worth the thought going into the imagination of creating one, as it can do nothing in the real world.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 16, 2010 10:44 AM

the hand itself is not actually the first mover in the series - it being dependent upon the arm, which is dependent upon the muscles, which are dependent upon neurons, which are dependent on the state of the nervous system, which is dependent on its current molecular structure, which depends upon its atomic basis, which depends upon electromagnetism, gravitation, the weak and strong forces - and so on - each member simultaneously dependent upon the former.

Such a chain...
-Daniel Smith

I think the best you could do to make a "chain" would be to pick out the greatest factor that would lead to the next greatest factor at any moment in time at any scale of resolution that would ultimately lead to the action under consideration. You would have to build fuzziness (unknowability) into the causation chain to even make the chain.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | March 16, 2010 11:05 AM

I wonder what Aquinas would have made of the concept of the past light cone? It pretty much destroys any causal-chain concept.

Posted by: Bored Wombat | March 17, 2010 12:29 AM

Ichthyic #21

I CAN direct you to the many arguments that have clearly shown this to be the case.

doubt you're really interested though, so long as this tactic appeases the faithheads, right?

If you can, go ahead.

I'm not disinterested, but I do think that what Ken does well has value. And I think that no one else is doing it as well.

Caine, Fleur du mal #24

Really? So it's okay for him to spew utter nonsense such as this?:

This sort of sly intervention, he argues, is vital to the Creator's project: if God were to re-grow limbs for amputees, for instance -- if God were to perform the sort of miracles demanded by atheists as proof of his existence -- the consequences would be disastrous. "Suppose that it was common knowledge that if you were a righteous person and of great faith and prayed deeply, all of a sudden, your limb would grow back," he says. "That would reduce God to a kind of supranatural force . . . and by pushing the button labeled 'prayer,' you could accomplish anything you wanted. What would that do to moral independence?"

Bullshit to your fanboi take. He's doing harm, just as all religious people do, by doing everything he can to keep people mentally tied to a construct which allows people to justify their pettiness, nastiness and evils towards others.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 17, 2010 1:48 AM

That's useful from a strategic perspective.

AYUP.

it's like I've said for years now...

NOMA logically holds no water.

that sure didn't make it any less effective an argument in staving off the fundies in Ohio.

there's the battles, and then there's the war...

I used to take my students on a field trip to a nearby woods, and have them look at the bark on the trees, record density analyses of lichen and other epiphyte coverage, etc. This is the science, and is easy to focus on to the exclusion of other things...

...then I would show them the plans to log the forest the following year, and walk them to the edge of the woods where they could see the clear-cuts surrounding.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 17, 2010 1:57 AM

And I think that no one else is doing it as well.

and you base that on what, exactly?

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 17, 2010 2:15 AM

...as a final note, I only say all this to clarify, as I've said many times before, that there needs to be a clear separation between the debate on tactics, vs the debate on rationality.

Why oh why is it so hard for accommodationists to realize that we can easily separate the two arguments, and debate the logical merits of their positions entirely apart from their current tactical merits?

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 17, 2010 2:25 AM

You channelling your inner Truth Machine, Ichthyic? With the multiple consecutive short posts, I mean.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 17, 2010 2:39 AM

hey, you can even get a used copy cheap, or it should be at any local library:

http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Biology-Douglas-J-Futuyma/dp/0878931899

for you, Daniel, all you would need to do is just read the introduction to see just how wrong you really are, and how ignorant of both science AND philosophy you are.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 17, 2010 9:28 AM

But it's not really a chain because you can't isolate a single cause of anything in that system, not even at the highest levels. There are too many interdependencies at any moment you choose to examine, some highly important in the outcome, others with nearly zero importance, and everything in between.

Aristotle recognized this. I believe he proposed a hierarchy of causes arranged by priority (though I'm unable to find the reference to that at the moment.) It is still true that any causality chain of the type I'm speaking about - no matter how branched - still ultimately depends on all the crucial elements being in place simultaneously.

I think the best you could do to make a "chain" would be to pick out the greatest factor that would lead to the next greatest factor at any moment in time at any scale of resolution that would ultimately lead to the action under consideration. You would have to build fuzziness (unknowability) into the causation chain to even make the chain.

So long as nothing is removed from the proposed chain that would be necessary in the real world, I don't have a problem with that.

What is knowledge?

Good question. I guess it has to do with the amount of information we can spout about a certain subject.

What makes knowledge valid?

Adherence to truth. (Go ahead ask - I dare you!)

Your original claim was that belief in God was more reasonable than a rejection of belief in God. What do you know about God?

Not a lot. I'm always seeking to know more.

How do you know that that knowledge is valid?

How do we know any knowledge is valid? Scientific knowledge is overturned all the time. What it ultimately comes down to is the ability to explain our world and our experience of it. I seek to verify my knowledge by putting it into practice and seeing if it works or by putting it out there in forums like these to hear the objections to it and decide for myself if they are valid.

Bring forth these counterarguments, if they exist.

OK, lets start with Hume's objections to causality. He objected partly to Aristotle and Aquinas on the grounds that chains of causality were temporally ordered and therefore did not necessarily follow. I've already provided the counterargument to that. Hume also argued, in attempting to refute Aquinas, that events were causes. Someone throws a brick - that's one event. A brick smashes a window - that's another event. For Hume, the two events could conceivably be unrelated, therefore (again) one does not necessarily cause the other. Aquinas and Aristotle however, broke causes down into categories. There are immediate or essential causes and accidental or temporally ordered causes. Both did not (to my knowledge) spend time arguing about the latter. Second, they both held that it's not events that are causes but things. The brick is the immediate efficient cause of the window shattering. An immediate efficient cause must exist simultaneously with its effect and therefore the two are related by necessity.

Nevertheless, people still want to pretend that Hume somehow refuted Aristotle and Aquinas. Unless he had better arguments than that, (and I'll leave it to you to provide them if he did), he didn't.

Then there's the argument that since Aristotle's physics was wrong, the rest of his philosophy must also be wrong. We're not talking about Aristotles physics though, we're talking about his metaphysics. His four causes - summed by the questions: What is it? What is it made of? How did it get here? and What does it do? - are relevant whether the Sun circles the Earth or whether the Earth orbits the Sun. IOW, just because Aristotle believed the science of his day (which - shock - was wrong!) doesn't mean that all of his ideas were bogus.

Then there's the "if everything has a cause then what caused God?" argument. This is a strawman since neither Aristotle nor Aquinas ever said "everything has a cause".

Also we have the argument that "just because you can show there must be a prime mover it hasn't been shown that that must mean God". I don't have the space to answer this one. Aquinas devoted countless pages in his works to proving just that though. Read Aquinas.

Would you concede if Aquinas' alleged "counterarguments", assuming they exist, can be shown to be fallacious as well?

Of course I would. Give it your best shot.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 17, 2010 11:56 AM

So you are saying that Aristotle recognized that you were wrong in #351 about a prime mover? Or are you saying that there are infinite hidden prime movers?

I don't think you understand what a prime mover is.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 17, 2010 12:03 PM

I don't think you understand what a prime mover is. -Daniel Smith

Could you explain it to me?

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 17, 2010 3:56 PM

Daniel Smith, since you offer no explanation, I will say that it does seem like Aristotle would have disagreed with you in equating a prime mover with your god, unless you were speaking as a polytheist. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover#The_number_of_movers

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 18, 2010 12:03 PM

Owlmirror,

You understand that Aquinas' "five ways" are mere summaries of his proofs of God and that they were part of an introductory text meant for beginners - don't you?

He wrote volumes on the subject. Taken in context, most of your arguments don't even apply to what he actually said or believed. You (and most who think he's been refuted) act as if the five ways was all he had to say on the subject.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 18, 2010 12:19 PM

He wrote volumes on the subject. Taken in context, most of your arguments don't even apply to what he actually said or believed. You (and most who think he's been refuted) act as if the five ways was all he had to say on the subject.

Daniel Smith, what this looks like is a case of you trying to get out of backing up your claims. Owlmirror graciously linked to everything Aquinas had to say, but rather than find and point to the relevant parts that you purportedly recall, you engage in hand-waving: "It's in there, somewhere!" That is not good enough, and sadly this is a pattern you are developing in your argumentation style.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 18, 2010 2:28 PM

I'd suggest you start here:
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles1.htm#13

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 18, 2010 2:43 PM

Ah, Daniel's trying to avoid showing his ignorance here. But if not posted here, he didn't say anything. The burden of proof is upon you Daniel, not a well refuted old philosopher. Get your act together, and post your ideas/logic here, or just give up. I suggest the later. You will still have your ideas and beliefs, but you didn't convince us of anything.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 18, 2010 8:22 PM

I don't have a lot of free time to spend here answering all of your questions. I'm online for maybe an hour a day and I have other sites I frequent during that time. I'll answer what I can, when I can.

But it is simply not true that we must posit one unmoved mover. There is nothing here that eliminates the possibility of infinite or at least more than one unmoved mover; more than one unmoved mover still fills the condition of not having the "causation chains" proceed infinitely through space-time. In other words: Monotheism FAIL.

You fail to grasp Aquinas' logic and then assert that it's untrue. He covers - at great length and from many angles - the proof that infinite prime movers is impossible. Read more, talk less.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 19, 2010 9:04 AM

Once more, he fails to consider multiple first efficient causes. The whole argument falls apart there every time. This is a possibility that must be eliminated due to the impossibility of following back every single "causal chain" (that is, knowing all the causes of any event or "movement"). Aquinas does not address multiple prime movers at all in chapter 13.

Aquinas' position, as I understand it, is that - even though we don't know all the participants in a branched causal chain (which does not mean we can't know them, only that we don't know them) - every branch in the chain of causality must necessarily itself end with a prime mover. IOW, it's the same prime mover for all chains and all branches.

Aquinas argues that God is infinite immediately after arguing that God is finite.

Aquinas never argues that God is finite. You have obviously misunderstood him.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 19, 2010 9:35 AM

IOW, it's the same prime mover for all chains and all branches.
-Daniel Smith

Yes, but he doesn't actually know that. He made it up. It is just as much a possibility that different causal chains have different prime movers.

we don't know all the participants in a branched causal chain (which does not mean we can't know them, only that we don't know them)
-Daniel Smith

How do you know we can know them all?

Aquinas never argues that God is finite. You have obviously misunderstood him.
-Daniel Smith

Chapter 42, "That God is one", God is one prime mover (last sentence, 42[5]). The concept of "one" is finite.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 19, 2010 12:25 PM

Daniel,
God is infinite? OK, is he aleph-zero or aleph-1?

Posted by: v.rosenzweig | March 19, 2010 12:56 PM

One problem with Aquinas's argument as quoted here (I haven't read the work in question) is that it is, logically as well as literally, pre-Einsteinian.

Aquinas had no concept of the limited speed of light and of the light cone. We cannot know everything about the universe we live in, because there are events outside our light cone. He assumes one mover, but that assumption is based on our ability to observe and trace all chains of causality.

The Big Bang and expanding universe also seem relevant here. If he's postulating his god as an actual entity within space-time, it's possible that this entity exists, started things going, but is no longer within our light cone. That is, we're not within us. So, there could be a prime mover that could no longer affect us, or know what we're doing.

Yes, believers often postulate/assume omnipotence and omniscience, but that's like postulating that the Flying Spaghetti Monster loves me because I have white hair. It's not evidence of anything. If someone is going to argue that god is outside the restraints of the physical universe, they can't also use what amounts to intuitive physics as evidence of that god's existence or properties.

Also, the Big Bang is a singularity in the information sense: we cannot know what happened "before" it. One mover, seventeen, none, aleph-null, we cannot ever know.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 19, 2010 1:03 PM

God is one infinite being (as opposed to two infinite beings, three infinite beings, four infinite beings,...)

This does not equate to God being finite. There are a finite number of Gods - specifically one - but that one God is an infinite being.
-Daniel Smith

So Aquinas does argue that God is finite—limited to one thing. Thank you for acknowledging that. And also thank you for acknowledging that more than one being of infinite size is possible. Then we can say that Chapter 42 considers that God is a countable entity and Chapter 43 considers that God has infinite size (spatial dimension, perhaps?), making God appear to encompass everything.

But how can God (a first mover) be everything if that includes things that are not God? How can a first mover be everything that it moves? And how can a first mover be incorporeal if it 1) interacts with corporeal beings and 2) is infinite in size and therefore incorporates corporeal beings into its being?

And when Aquinas writes, "Therefore, its first mover must be one." in 42[5], why does he not consider the problem of multiple first movers and thus multiple gods (or multiple infinite beings)?

A prime mover is 100% actual, 0% potential. This means it is unchanging. If you are correct, there are a number of things that meet that definition. Can you name any?
-Daniel Smith

I'm really getting sick of this Aquinas nonsense. How about I propose a last stopper (or moved unmover) that stops the first mover before it moves anything thereby letting nature take its course. It only would take one moved unmover and that would pretty much kill the whole unmoved mover concept. What happens when the unmoved mover is deflected back and ends up moving itself?

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 20, 2010 5:52 PM

Me: A prime mover is 100% actual, 0% potential.

Nerd of Redhead: Then it is a physical object.

I guess you don't understand Aristotle's concept of Actuality and Potentiality. (See #342)

"100% actual, 0% potential" means that it is pure, unchanging existence.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 20, 2010 6:05 PM

Aristotle thought women had fewer teeth than men. tell me, why should I take anything that idiot came up with seriously, when he couldn't even be bothered to check on such a basic fact? Aristotle and reality haven't precisely been well acquainted, you know. All his waffling about the nature of existence has no basis in reality. Why should I even consider it?

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 20, 2010 6:14 PM

I'm just waiting for Daniel Smith here to start arguing against the Periodic Table based on the philosophy of the Four Elements! it would be just as rational and realistic as what he's doing now...

Posted by: John Morales | March 20, 2010 6:20 PM

Actually, it is known that there are many prime movers.

Aristotle would've been startled to see them, I suspect.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 20, 2010 6:41 PM

just because he was marginally less detached from reality than other cultures of the time, doesn't mean he (and other greeks) was all that well-acquainted with it.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 20, 2010 6:50 PM

But how can God (a first mover) be everything if that includes things that are not God?

The problem is in your premise. Because God is "infinite" does not necessarily mean that he is "everything".

If, as you said, there could possibly be more than one infinite being (and infinite = everything) then these infinite beings would each be everything - making them indistinguishable from each other. So either there cannot be more than one infinite being OR "infinite" does not equal "everything".

So which is it?

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 20, 2010 7:00 PM

Because God is "infinite" does not necessarily mean that he is "everything".

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 20, 2010 7:02 PM

Don't forget that he pretty much invented(with other greeks)naturalistic thought, came up with the first classification of animals in Historia/De Partibus Animalium, and pretty much founded biology and anatomy. Of course he made errors, but his way of thinking in naturalistic terms and how he sought answers was radically new at the time. The philosophical stuff he wrote is a different kettle of fish...

That's a switch... Aristotle being praised for his science - not his metaphysics!

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 20, 2010 7:08 PM

actually, yes it does, for any coherent definition of "infinite". because if god weren't everything, then he'd be finite: he'd "end" where other things begin.

Bullshit. Infinite implies everything.

Then answer the question:

If there could possibly be more than one infinite being (and infinite = everything) then these infinite beings would each be everything - making them indistinguishable from each other. So either there cannot be more than one infinite being OR "infinite" does not equal "everything".

So which is it?

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 20, 2010 7:16 PM

Why are you here?

Isn't that the great unanswered question? Actually I am just learning this stuff and wanted to "throw it to the wolves" and see if it gets ripped to shreds.

What exactly are you trying to argue for?

That should be pretty clear by now.

Are you scared that God doesn't exist?

Nope.

Posted by: John Morales | March 20, 2010 7:22 PM

Daniel,

That's a switch... Aristotle being praised for his science - not his metaphysics!

Nah, not a switch, it's quite consistent — though you might note it's his proto-science that receives acknowledgement.

If there could possibly be more than one infinite being ...

There can't be even one, as per #414 and #415.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 20, 2010 7:23 PM

Can infinites even exist in anything more than the abstract mathematical sense?

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | March 20, 2010 7:33 PM

Can infinites even exist in anything more than the abstract mathematical sense?

"God made the integers, all the rest is the work of man." - Leopold Kronecker

It's an interesting topic if whether infinities and the real numbers are nothing more than just a mathematical artifact. Both lead to counter-intuitive results.

Whatever the case may be, I'm not even sure if Daniel Smith's definition of infinite bears any resemblance to the mathematical sense because I have no idea of how he is using the word.

Posted by: Rorschach | March 20, 2010 7:44 PM

I don't think the/our universe is a great example for something infinite, what with multiverses seeming more and more likely to exist and all...

To me the term really is just a mathematical construct.Nice big gap to shove a god into, though.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 20, 2010 7:48 PM

To me the term really is just a mathematical construct.

It is not even clear that there can be one thing that is "everything".

Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic). | March 20, 2010 7:53 PM

I have seen folks claim that God is infinite, and other such tripe, before. They often argue for the existence of an god for various logical reasons, yet completely overlook the fact that a logical, infinite, and divinely compassionate god is very much NOT the snarly little JHW of the Bible.

The other odd argument believers advance about an infinite god is that the disproof of his existence would require a search of every little-bitty bit of the infinite universe, which would require that the searcher be infinite and therefor would be God. Or some such nonsense. Logic, at least the way I see it, says that one can disprove an infinite god by examining ANY part of the universe and finding no god in that part. My argument then is that if there is no God in the heart and mind of a Christian, there is not God anywhere.

So you folks that come here and make inane arguments for infinite gods, be aware that if your argument fails, your god was obviously not helping you, and it evaporates in a puff of logic.

Lesser versions of that argument apply to all religious folks, but are particularly sweet in the case of Christians. Their holy book say that if they drive someone away from God, they go to Hell. So hassling us is really risky.

Of course, Christians are playing for infinite stakes already, which just makes it more strange that most of them don't bother to put more effort into their religious research.

But then, if I had a mad god threatening me with eternal fire for the least screw-up, I'd probably be hiding under the bed with my fingers in my ears, going, "La-la-la-la" and praying that I had lucked into the right religion, denomination and flavour, just by being born in the right place.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 20, 2010 7:59 PM

They often argue for the existence of an god for various logical reasons, yet completely overlook the fact that a logical, infinite, and divinely compassionate god is very much NOT the snarly little JHW of the Bible.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 20, 2010 8:14 PM

Can anybody help me?

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 20, 2010 8:36 PM

Has it been said yet? Ex nihilo nihil fit is empirically wrong, as predicted by quantum physics.

So wrong, in fact, that if you put 2 metal plates into a vacuum, 100 nm from each other, nothing exerts an entire atmosphere of pressure to push them together!

"All philosophy written before the Industrial Revolution is best forgotten."
– Opinion 12

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 21, 2010 5:15 PM

Daniel, forget your sophistry, what is the evidence. That is where your argument fails. Your argument and reality do not agree. Therefore, your argument, which is not based on reality, but rather sophistry and presupposition, fails.

The metaphysical arguments I've been making rest on simple premises based on observed phenomena which are largely not in dispute. For example, the premise that everything that exists is actual, that is - it is real and not imaginary. Liquid water is actually liquid water - it exists, it is not imagined.

Secondly there is the premise that everything that changes must have the potential to change and can only change in a way that it has the potential to do so. Liquid water has the potential to change to steam or ice, it cannot change into a rock or a car.

Thirdly, everything that changes, changes because something else that actually exists acts upon it. Liquid water changes to steam when exposed to the right amount of heat. It is something that is actually hot that makes the water actually hot and so it realizes its potential to become steam.

Are we together so far?

This is where it gets interesting.

Everything that is presently changing is simultaneously being changed by something else acting upon it. The water that is presently boiling and changing to steam is being heated by something that is simultaneously hot; that heat is simultaneously generated by an energy source - say an electric stove; that effect (the heat of the burner) is simultaneously caused by electricity flowing through a resistive load; that effect is simultaneously based on the properties of electrons in the molecular structure of the burner; which is simultaneously caused by the properties of the atoms themselves - and so on. The point being that everything in this simultaneous causal chain is dependent upon something else for its effect - if any one of these things is not there the chain falls apart.

Still with me?

This type of chain of causality - one that is simultaneous and dependent - cannot be infinite. If everything in the chain is dependent upon something else, the chain must end (actually begin) with something that is not dependent upon something else.

This brings us back to actuality and potentiality.

Everything in the chain that we've examined thus far has been a mixture of actuality and potentiality. The water has the potential to become hot; the electricity has the potential to flow; the molecular structure of the burner has the potential to be excited; etc. It is when all these things are exercising their potential (changing from potential to actual) at the same time, that the water realizes its potential to become steam (changes from potential steam to actual steam.) If the water does not have the potential to become steam, or if the burner did not have the potential to carry electrical current, or if the molecules did not have the ability to give up and take on electrons, the chain stops there and the water never changes.

So, every chain of causality of this type (that is - simultaneous causes) eventually (fairly quickly actually) arrives at the basic foundations of matter and energy in the universe. But these foundations are themselves a mixture of actuality and potentiality and hence only actualize their potential when something else acts upon them.

This thing that sustains these forces must itself be something that is actual and unchanging - something that does not have the potential to change - or else the whole thing falls apart - placing us right back at the start, again looking for something that is not dependent upon anything else. And, since matter, time, space, energy - all these things - have the potential to change, the thing that is purely actual must be immaterial and not itself subject to these things.

So, to answer your question, the evidence leads us to the conclusion that the universe is, at every moment, sustained by something immaterial and unchanging. These are, of course, two of the attributes we ascribe to God. Therefore it is entirely reasonable (as my initial post stated) to believe in God.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 21, 2010 5:28 PM

However, to assume that the first member must be caused (which is what ex nihilo nihil fit amounts to) is to assume that a necessary being must exist. This is the very issue in question.

No theological argument that I know of (of course there may be some) assumes that the first member "must be caused". All the arguments I've heard (and certainly Aquinas') arrive at the conclusion that the first member must be uncaused.

Posted by: Sastra | March 21, 2010 5:34 PM

Daniel Smith #440 wrote:

And, since matter, time, space, energy - all these things - have the potential to change, the thing that is purely actual must be immaterial and not itself subject to these things.

The "unchanging" thing you're talking about is simply the concept of "reality" itself -- or "existence" -- which does not change to non-real, or to non-exist. Everything else, even a hypothetical God, is a form (or possible form) of the underlying 'bedrock' of reality.

So, to answer your question, the evidence leads us to the conclusion that the universe is, at every moment, sustained by something immaterial and unchanging. These are, of course, two of the attributes we ascribe to God. Therefore it is entirely reasonable (as my initial post stated) to believe in God.

God is not unchanging: it's supposed to make choices, and act on those choices. Personhood is a collection of complicated attributes, and they simply won't all fit into the regression to Ultimate Simple you're going for.

The argument then fails even on its own terms, because it doesn't follow its chain of reasoning far enough.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 21, 2010 5:50 PM

Thirdly, everything that changes, changes because something else that actually exists acts upon it.

can't be bothered to read the rest or your argument, since your premises are already wrong.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 21, 2010 6:01 PM

Me: If there could possibly be more than one infinite being (and infinite = everything) then these infinite beings would each be everything - making them indistinguishable from each other.

Owlmirror: Just because they are indistinguishable does not mean that they are not separate and individual. All of the protons in your body -- and in the universe -- are indistinguishable from each other, but it does not follow that they are the same proton.

Try again.

Me: A prime mover is 100% actual, 0% potential.

Owlmirror: You mean like everything else that is actually real?

Try again.

Me: If you are correct, there are a number of things that meet that definition. Can you name any?

Owlmirror: Why do they have to be named? Calling them names -- like "God", "Zeus", "Apollo", "Athena", "Ra", "Odin" -- suggests that they are people, when there's no reason to posit such a thing.

This is a silly objection. Does calling a proton a "proton" suggest that a proton is a person? When I asked "Can you name any?", I was not implying that these "multiple prime movers" were people or gods. I was merely asking him to tell me what they are.

Me: Because God is "infinite" does not necessarily mean that he is "everything".

Owlmirror: Not necessarily "everything", but the "ground" of everything; the prime mover of everything that moves, and of course, everything is continually in motion. That was your point, right?

Your dispute on this point is not with me, it's with aratina cage, Nerd of Redhead, and Jadehawk. They are the ones who claimed that "infinite" necessarily means "everything".

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 21, 2010 6:12 PM

Nerd of Redhead: No, I smell sophistry coming, not evidence. Try putting the evidence before the rationalization. It will make you look less foolish. You do that by citing the peer reviewed scientific literature as a basis for your inane point.

Hiding behind "science" is cowardly. If you can actually refute my arguments - by showing the premises to be untrue, or by showing that the conclusions don't rationally follow - then do so.

Otherwise you're just avoiding the issue because (one can only presume) you have no coherent counter-arguments.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 21, 2010 6:16 PM

Otherwise you're just avoiding the issue because (one can only presume) you have no coherent counter-arguments.

but in any case, your premises have already been shown to be incorrect, so stop rambling.

Posted by: Sastra | March 21, 2010 6:20 PM

Wowbagger OM #451 wrote:

Which isn't a problem for us - but it's a heck of a problem for Daniel Smith because he's eventually going to make the leap that the possible god he's alluding to must exist and be his specific god; he's just hoping we won't notice.

No; my point was that his regression doesn't lead to deism either: it leads to a very basic concept of "reality" or "existence."

Even a deistic God, has to have attributes. Once it has attributes, then there's a hypothetical 'potential' for change.

Posted by: Sastra | March 21, 2010 6:26 PM

Daniel Smith #453 wrote:

I am not saying that God lacks will, mind, awareness, goals, consciousness, etc.
I am, for the moment anyway, only dealing with the existence of God as proven by Aquinas' five ways. If you want to move beyond that to his divine attributes, then you must be ceding the first point. Is that the case?

No. To state it again, your regression argument only gets to Reality or Existence. Since atheists have no problem with "reality is real" or "existence exists," then Reality/Existence is not God, and I'm not going to label it that way.

God requires attributes (and person-hood attributes at that!); this takes it out of the 'fundamental and unchanging' category you want to place it into.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 21, 2010 6:30 PM

Sastra wrote:

No; my point was that his regression doesn't lead to deism either: it leads to a very basic concept of "reality" or "existence."

Whatever he's avoiding by purporting such a nebulous god-concept, he's going to be making a leap eventually. Even proponents of the weakest form of deism don't bother arguing with atheists; it's only theists wearing deist's clothing who do - and those clothes come off like velcro stripper-pants at the first opportunity.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 21, 2010 6:38 PM

Daniel Smith #450

Hiding behind "science" is cowardly.

Hear that, guys. Daniel has determined that rationality and the real world are cowardly.

If you can actually refute my arguments - by showing the premises to be untrue, or by showing that the conclusions don't rationally follow - then do so.

In my post #429 I showed your "uncreated creator" depends on begging the question.

Otherwise you're just avoiding the issue because (one can only presume) you have no coherent counter-arguments.

Sorry, guy, but your arguments have been refuted. Now it's your turn to try to refute Nerd's demand for actual, physical evidence of The Big Guy In The Sky. You know, the one who worries about how often you masturbate.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 21, 2010 7:17 PM

Hmm, it looks like that shorter version of Daniel Smith's (eventual) position is something like this: 'stuff is + Jesus died for your sins; ergo, Christianity roolz!

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | March 21, 2010 7:29 PM

Hiding behind "science" is cowardly.

Posted by: Sastra | March 21, 2010 8:04 PM

Feynmaniac #465 wrote:

Then why not assume the universe itself is "uncaused"? At least we know it exists.

There's a trick here: "universe" can mean the particular version of space/time which we find ourselves in, or it can mean something like cosmos (or Universe) -- everything. If you allow the Thomists to narrow the term down, they start to bring in the kalam argument, that the universe had a beginning, and we get bogged down in that whole mess.

The cosmos -- the whole shebang -- is uncaused. By definition. Even a hypothetical (and probably impossible) "nothingness" would have to be a form of the cosmos (reality).

Modern science seems to have undermined poor Aquinas and his 5 Intuitive Ways You Can Come Up With While Sitting in your Armchair. But I also think the argument fails even without physics, on its own terms. It tries to establish a God without any of the truly relevant godly attributes. But that only gets us to the concept of the cosmos.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 21, 2010 8:15 PM

Feynmaniac wrote:

No. But for the sake of argument let's assume you have proven that X exists and is unique (where X is first cause, or whatever). Show that X has the properties of intentionality, mind, etc. and that X is indeed the Christian God (or whatever version of God you believe in).

If Daniel is game we can expect the usual tapdance routine; I predict it will include sidesteps, shuck-and-jives and the frequent use of jazz hands.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 21, 2010 8:32 PM

#440:

So, to answer your question, the evidence leads us to the conclusion that the universe is, at every moment, sustained by something immaterial and unchanging. These are, of course, two of the attributes we ascribe to God.

For pity's sake. That is as stupid as saying that apples have the attributes of being fruit, and invisible purple obsequious metallic square snozzberries have the attribute of being fruit, therefore, snozzberries exist because apples do.

Therefore it is entirely reasonable (as my initial post stated) to believe in God.

Reasoning from fallacies and using fallacies to reason is the opposite of reasonable.

=====

#448:

Apples and oranges.

No, that's your fallacy.

If we are talking about infinite individuals, and we are saying that infinite = everything, then each infinite individual is not like an individual proton but is instead "all the protons in the universe" - making them indistinguishable in every respect (and inseperable) from each other.

Who is talking about "individuals"? I'm talking about "prime movers", which you have not even established are "individuals".

And since prime movers are by your reasoning immaterial, there's no physical or logical impossibility that prevents a multiplicity of them being simultaneously everything, now is there?

This is a silly objection.

Your entire argument that a putative unique prime mover should be called "God" is much more silly.

Does calling a proton a "proton" suggest that a proton is a person? When I asked "Can you name any?", I was not implying that these "multiple prime movers" were people or gods. I was merely asking him to tell me what they are.

Why should they be anything besides prime movers? In fact, by your own arguments, they cannot be anything else besides prime movers. M′₁, M′₂, M′₃, M′₄, and M′₅ are members of the set "all members of M′". But precisely because they are as fundamental as you insist, they cannot be anything else, any more than your putative unique prime mover can.

Your dispute on this point is not with me, it's with aratina cage, Nerd of Redhead, and Jadehawk. They are the ones who claimed that "infinite" necessarily means "everything".

Are you saying that my clarification is indeed correct by your own definitions?

=========

#450:

Hiding behind "science" is cowardly. If you can actually refute my arguments - by showing the premises to be untrue, or by showing that the conclusions don't rationally follow - then do so.

It's been done repeatedly. You simply refuse to acknowledge it -- which is unreasonable and cowardly.

=========

#453:

I am not saying that God lacks will, mind, awareness, goals, consciousness, etc.

Actually, you are. As soon as you commit to your unchanging prime mover as being "God", regardless of the simple fact that you have no reason to do so, you utterly destroy any possibility of "God" having will, mind, awareness, goals, consciousness, etc -- because all of those qualities involve change. They are utterly contradictory with being unchanging in their very essence.

Too bad for you.

I am, for the moment anyway, only dealing with the existence of God as proven by Aquinas' five ways.

Using fallacious logic, whose lack of reason which you simply refuse to acknowledge. This failure to acknowledge the fallacies is itself unreasonable, meaning that your belief in God is unreasonable, and your belief that it is reasonable to believe in God is even more unreasonable.

If you want to move beyond that to his divine attributes, then you must be ceding the first point.

How can it be "ceded" when it is entirely unreasonable in the first place?

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 21, 2010 8:41 PM

If Daniel is game we can expect the usual tapdance routine;

While wearing clown shoes.

I predict it will include sidesteps, shuck-and-jives and the frequent use of jazz hands.

And a few pratfalls.

There may also be custard pie.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 21, 2010 8:48 PM

Owlmirror wrote:

There may also be custard pie.

Which is yet another supporting argument for what I started claiming ages ago when dealing with a similarly inane argument from the wretched fool facilis - that the only true god is Sideshow Bob.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 21, 2010 9:17 PM

Daniel Smith @440, your first two premises are tautologies. However, you lost me with the third, namely that: "Thirdly, everything that changes, changes because something else that actually exists acts upon it."

There is every evidence that nuclear decays, atomic transistions and most other quantum events take place spontaneously--that is, uncaused by any outside event.

And, in your #445, yes, protons can be distinguished by statiotemporal coordinates--photons, pions, etc. not so much. So the question for you is whether your deity is a boson.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 21, 2010 9:56 PM

There is every evidence that nuclear decays, atomic transistions and most other quantum events take place spontaneously--that is, uncaused by any outside event.

Oh, it only looks uncaused. But since it changes, some fundamental unchanging aspect of the universe must be causing the change. That we call the prime mover. And if we're dishonest and/or given to using fallacious logic, that we also call God.

</metaphysical logic>

So the question for you is whether your deity is a boson.

Or even a Bozon.

<*Honk!*>

Posted by: John Morales | March 22, 2010 5:44 AM

Sigh. Only a few scraps of bone and gristle remain, and I'm not that desperate.

Ah well.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 22, 2010 7:10 PM

As soon as you commit to your unchanging prime mover as being "God", regardless of the simple fact that you have no reason to do so, you utterly destroy any possibility of "God" having will, mind, awareness, goals, consciousness, etc -- because all of those qualities involve change. They are utterly contradictory with being unchanging in their very essence.

The problem I see with your argument is that it assumes that all consciousness is like human consciousness, that all will is like human will, that all intellect is like human intellect, that all reason is like human reason. There is no reason to assume that.

Beyond that, the very fact that human reason, will, intellect, and consciousness both exist and change, points to an uncaused cause of all reason, will, intellect, consciousness, and etc. that does not change.

One of Aquinas'/Aristotle's premises is that any agent of change must itself have the ability to cause said change. It cannot give what it does not have to give. A block of ice cannot cause a fire because it does not contain that potentiality. A burning ember can - it is itself on fire. It is said to contain that feature formally. A cigarette lighter can also cause a fire - though it is not itself on fire. It is said to contain that feature eminently. For their to be mind, will, intellect and all the higher forms of consciousness, their ultimate cause must have all these features either formally or eminently.

The further you take this, the more it points to an eternal being of infinite unchanging will, power, mind, life...

There is every evidence that nuclear decays, atomic transistions and most other quantum events take place spontaneously--that is, uncaused by any outside event.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 22, 2010 7:18 PM

Even so, these things are caused by the ever changing properties or natures of the particles themselves.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 22, 2010 7:27 PM

Change requires cause.

I though several people JUST explained to you, giving examples, why this is not so.

I'm sure you're absolutely stuck in a catch 22 of teleology, but you can, in fact, get change without teleological cause.

whatever. Obvious to me you're a waste of time.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 22, 2010 7:32 PM

Even so, these things are caused by the ever changing properties or natures of the particles themselves.

yes, you don't get to redefine natural processes simply because they don't fit your personal notion of all things teleological.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 22, 2010 7:38 PM

points to an uncaused cause of all reason, will, intellect, consciousness, and etc. that does not change.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 22, 2010 7:49 PM

A block of ice cannot cause a fire because it does not contain that potentiality.

seriously, the "potentiality" shit about things only having potential to do certain things completely breaks down at the atomic level and below:everything is made of the same stuff, therefore stuff has the potential to be everything there is.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 22, 2010 7:53 PM

Nerd wrote:

Kinda reminds me of another presupposition fool (F. the fallacious fool). Tried to play gotcha with his definitions, but couldn't show any evidence either.

Daniel isn't quite as stupid; Facilis made the fatal mistake of demanding we accept both his unsupported assertions: i.e. that a) his presup nonsense was valid and b) it only supported the Christian god and no other.

Since Daniel hasn't tried to bridge the vast gap between potential philosophical god and necessarily existing god he's only wrong on one level.

Posted by: Sastra | March 22, 2010 8:03 PM

Facilis was making a presuppositional argument (or trying to); Daniel is making an evidential one (we can reason from the evidence of nature, to God). It may seem similar because they both appeal to simplistic intuitions about mind. The Thomists at least engage in apologetics. Presupps just end up being an extended insult.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 22, 2010 8:16 PM

Sastra wrote:

Facilis was making a presuppositional argument (or trying to); Daniel is making an evidential one (we can reason from the evidence of nature, to God).

True, but the underlying flaws in the logic are the same, since they both boil down to the same assumption, which is: something, therefore (necessarily) something else and that something else must be god.

Yes, there are differences. Facilis looks at a cat and says 'cats must come from somewhere - therefore god'; Daniel Smith looks at a cat and says 'there must be a perfect cat and that perfect cat is god'.

It's the 'musts' that bother me, rather than the steps involved.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 22, 2010 8:25 PM

(And that insult (@#222) looks very much like the sort of insult presuppositionalists use)

Posted by: Sastra | March 22, 2010 8:32 PM

This from a Calvinist site:

A Christian Reconstructionist is a Presuppositionalist. He does not try to "prove" that God exists or that the Bible is true. He holds to the Faith because the Bible says so, not because he can "prove" it. He does not try to convince the unconverted that the gospel is true. They already know it is true when they hear it. They need repentance, not evidence. Of course, the Christian Reconstructionist believes there is evidence for the Faith, in fact, there is nothing but evidence for the Faith. The problem for the unconverted, though, is not a lack of evidence, but a lack of submission. The Christian Reconstructionist begins and ends with the Bible. He does not defend "natural theology," and other inventions designed to find some agreement with covenant-breaking apostate mankind.

Catholics do defend "natural theology," and Daniel's claim that our position is unreasonable is actually a fair one, because it's not attacking us, but the line of reasoning. It's designed to persuade us, through examining, together, the world as our starting point. The fact that Thomists go backwards and look for evidence to support a foregone conclusion isn't really the same as presuppositionalism. Presupps explicitly start out with God, and say so do we, but we lie.

In my experience, the Calvinists and Catholics both despise each others form of apologetics, thinking it a kind of heresy. Theologically, they don't really get along.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | March 22, 2010 8:46 PM

Daniel Smith says, "So says the science of today."

So science is just a matter of convenience for you, eh? Well, Dan'l, one criterion I have for an acceptable philosophy of life is the ability to accommodate reality as it exists--and you just failed, utterly.

Posted by: Sastra | March 22, 2010 9:24 PM

Heddle's not a presupper, though. People don't always use the form of apologetics their particular religion is 'known' for. Wasn't Piltdown Man a Catholic who argued against evolution?

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 22, 2010 9:34 PM

You don't even bother trying any mistake in it.

...to find...

Also failed at inserting a comma elsewhere.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | March 22, 2010 9:45 PM

Sastra wrote:

Heddle's not a presupper, though. People don't always use the form of apologetics their particular religion is 'known' for. Wasn't Piltdown Man a Catholic who argued against evolution?

Oh, I didn't mean I wanted them to fight because of the contrasting ideological positions of their distinct denominational apologetics - it was for teh lulz...

Posted by: E.V. | March 22, 2010 10:06 PM

Where have I heard this before:

The metaphysical arguments I've been making rest on simple premises based on observed phenomena which are largely not in dispute.

Oh yeah. It was a bunch of hooey, too.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | March 22, 2010 11:15 PM

oh, and I so called it when I said he was gonna start arguing against the Periodic table :-)

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 23, 2010 2:21 AM

Daniel's claim that our position is unreasonable is actually a fair one

I don't see how this follows. It would be fair if he had any reason in his arguments, and we did not, but it's actually the other way around.

The fact that Thomists go backwards and look for evidence to support a foregone conclusion isn't really the same as presuppositionalism.

I don't think that there's any difference between a presupposition and a foregone conclusion.

I mean, what distinguishes them?

Presupps explicitly start out with God, and say so do we, but we lie.

That's what Christian Reconstructionists do, but not all presuppositionalists hold exactly the same presuppositions.

=======

Heddle's not a presupper

I grant that he doesn't seem to use the apologetic so much, but he has claimed to be one.

Jason over at Evolutionblog posted a portion of presuppositional argumentation about logic, similar to what facilis was always yammering on about.

Heddle claimed that he does accept presupposition @#64 on that thread, and in comment #97, defined "presuppositionalism" as meaning "Assuming the bible is the word of God" -- a far weaker claim in itself than that of the Reconstructionist citation that you quoted.

Although, he links to the Wikipedia page on presuppositional apologetics, which when examined in detail, looks more like what you cited.

I'm not sure heddle's clear on what presuppositionalism is, but then, I suspect that presuppositionalism is so much of an epistemic denial-of-service attack that it basically means whatever the presuppositionalist wants it to mean.

"Logic belongs to the Christian God as described in the Bible, so you can't use logic to argue against God. So too with math, science, language, reason, thinking, arguing, opening your mouth, closing your mouth, staring at me in disbelief, snorting, rolling your eyes, and calling me an annoying uncharitable insulting fallacious asshole. Ow. Smacking me in the face also belongs to the Christian God as described in the Bible. Oog. And punching me out. Aaaargh." (and so on)

(I'm starting to wonder if presuppositionalism is my Berserk Button.)

I tried drawing heddle out on that thread, but sometimes heddle just stops arguing a topic. Possibly because he decides it's futile to argue with someone without a Christian worldview, possibly because he gets bored.

Also, RD @#56 in the thread posted this analysis of dealing with presupp:

  http://gatorfreethought.org/witmer%20talk%201.pdf

Wasn't Piltdown Man a Catholic who argued against evolution?

Not exactly... he did ask about it, and I think displayed common confusion about evolution, but it wasn't one of his hot topics. He is more into the social side of things; defending the Church, and attacking those that he perceives as attacking the Church.

And claiming that the Church has the right to kill people who are not Catholic for not being Catholic (never that directly, but by insinuation and implication).

Posted by: John Morales | March 23, 2010 4:19 AM

Water ice can also light a fire: Making Fire From Ice.

Posted by: Sastra | March 23, 2010 9:06 AM

Owlmirror #516 wrote:

I don't see how this follows. It would be fair if he had any reason in his arguments, and we did not, but it's actually the other way around.

I didn't mean that his accusation was itself reasonable, ie justified; just that it assumed a common framework of rationality, and granted that we were legitimately involved in the same process of reasoning -- in contrast to the DOS form of presuppositionalism you lampoon so brilliantly later in your post. That's what facilis was using.

Heddle claimed that he does accept presupposition @#64 on that thread, and in comment #97, defined "presuppositionalism" as meaning "Assuming the bible is the word of God" -- a far weaker claim in itself than that of the Reconstructionist citation that you quoted.

Yes, I'd already read that thread, and was actually thinking of it specifically when I said he wasn't a presupper. He began by rejecting Lisle's argument with "the existence of logic or mathematics strikes me as neutral with no possibility that it hurts the theist and no possibility that it helps the atheist." He has also admitted on Pharyngula, that he could consider changing his mind, given empirical evidence -- and gave examples. That's not the pure version of the presup.

I think that when heddle claims to be a presuppositionalist, he's using a more liberal, flexible interpretation of what that means. Big surprise.

I'm not sure heddle's clear on what presuppositionalism is, but then, I suspect that presuppositionalism is so much of an epistemic denial-of-service attack that it basically means whatever the presuppositionalist wants it to mean.

I agree. It seems to be conflated with accepting God/Christianity/Bible on faith (or due to Grace of God Enlightenment) and then looking back to see how it all fits with worldly reality. That's not really the same thing.

A natural theologist can think that the atheist is wrong, because he or she came to the wrong conclusion. They ignored important evidence, and used fallacious reasoning. There is a case for atheism, but it's not as good as the case for God. One can weigh them side by side, and then arrive at the truth.

Presuppers can't grant even that. The atheist is not mistaken: he or she is depraved. Atheists can't even start to make a case. It's like someone trying to argue against reason itself: they're using reason, to do so. It's absurd.

Posted by: Daniel Smith | March 23, 2010 12:07 PM

Sorry, no. You may get a provisional pass for the metaphysics of physics, but not for consciousness -- unless you can demonstrate that consciousness has no relationship whatsoever with the physical.

It is precisely because human consciousness IS related to the physical that it DOES change. Anything tied to matter has the potential to change. The consciousness of the unchanging changer on the other hand, does not change because the unchanging changer is not tied to matter but is immaterial.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | March 23, 2010 12:28 PM

Daniel, the unchanging changer is a load of horseshit. Please think a little bit before crapping out words next time.