Pharyngula

Posted by: mistereveready | September 2, 2010 11:21 AM

Yay I was hoping for something like this. Would be rather spiffy to see dawkins turn stephen meyers or some other popular creationist/religitard into intellectual pulp.

Posted by: Sajanas | September 2, 2010 11:25 AM

It seemed like the religion editor's only argument was "it makes me feel good to believe it" and "I feel better than I did when I didn't believe in god". Neither one of these things is proof, and when he asks her why she doesn't believe something different, it seemed to come down to either not bothering to explore the differences or being afraid to risk what she has by changing. I wonder if she really was an atheist.... I've heard lots of people suggest they didn't believe in god before their conversion, but none of them really explain why. I suspect they just never put any thought into it, and thus were susceptible to the argument of "oh, wouldn't you rather have heaven?" and buy it without critical thinking. Most of my friends who are atheists are self made, through the rejection of something else... I doubt they'd ever get back into any religion because they're used to the concepts and the BS.

Posted by: Dr. I. Needtob Athe | September 2, 2010 11:29 AM

The naive assumption that everything must have a purpose is what gave us astrology. Primitive man didn't look at the stars and ask "what are they", they looked at the stars and asked "what are they for?"

Posted by: syntactic.myopenid.com | September 2, 2010 11:36 AM

I think the thing to be learned here is that this "debate" format is pretty awful. Seems like there were questions and comments constantly flying in from all sides and neither Dawkins nor the Times people could give many of them the attention they deserved.

Posted by: Sandi | September 2, 2010 11:39 AM

You didn't address the second question at all, PZ.(And neither can Hawkings.) How did the laws of physics originate? It is insufficient to simply declare that the law of gravity can make "nothing turn into something." Who created the law of gravity? Or, phrased differently, how did gravity come into existence? Science teaches us that there must be a first cause for everything. If you're willing to believe that gravity just always existed and never had a beginning, then you might as well believe in God for the same reasons. Either way, you're believing something on Faith and without scientific proof to back it up. How did mathematical order and orderly physical laws spring into existence from nothing? Can't happen. Gravity, stars, and even atoms had to have a beginning--something cannot come from nothing. If you want to take something on Faith, then my faith is as good as yours.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/DhjBEuJ8pt63x6eBKuPx0Jv9_QE-#7c327 | September 2, 2010 11:43 AM

Personally, I think this is a very good idea. The questions may strike us as silly, but the people who might pick up a copy of Time would never read "The God Delusion."
Sometimes it's probably a good idea for us to preach to someone other than the choir.

Posted by: Canadian | September 2, 2010 11:46 AM

Sandi (#9),

You have just proven that there are indeed stupid questions. even if you assume that something can only into existence by being created, you face the problem of ultimate regression of creators.

It's not necessary for everything to be created and things can indeed come from nothing. Some God is the creator of it all and came from nothing... if you hold the position that something comes from nothing, then you are contradicting yourself.

Je n'ai pas de besoin de cette hypothèse-la.

Posted by: iiandyiiii#0fab0 | September 2, 2010 11:51 AM

So many things wrong, Sandi:

Science teaches us that there must be a first cause for everything.

It does? Where? How does it define a "first cause"?

If you're willing to believe that gravity just always existed and never had a beginning, then you might as well believe in God for the same reasons. Either way, you're believing something on Faith and without scientific proof to back it up.

Who said that they believe gravity "just always existed", and "never had a beginning"?

How did mathematical order and orderly physical laws spring into existence from nothing? Can't happen. Gravity, stars, and even atoms had to have a beginning--something cannot come from nothing.

Has anyone claimed that they sprung from nothing? Has anyone claimed a full and complete understanding of the Big Bang?

The big problem, Sandi, is that using God as an answer doesn't definitively answer ANYTHING. It just raises more questions. If God made the universe, how did he make it? If the universe or physical laws aren't (or can't be) eternal or without beginning, then why can God? Or does God have a beginning/creator? What caused God? How did God make the physical laws? What process did he use? Why did he make them the way he made them?

Science doesn't have an answer to every question. But scientists are working on it, and the gaps in knowledge are shrinking continuously.

Posted by: MarkW | September 2, 2010 11:53 AM

Sandi at #9: Godbot fail.

Science teaches us that there must be a first cause for everything.

It does no such thing. Google "virtual particles".

If you're willing to believe that gravity just always existed and never had a beginning, then you might as well believe in God for the same reasons.

At least we have some evidence that gravity exists. For gods... not so much.

How did mathematical order and orderly physical laws spring into existence from nothing?

Have you evidence that they did "spring into existence"? It is simpler to assume that they have always existed.

Posted by: MarkW | September 2, 2010 11:57 AM

OK, sorry to join the pile-on but #9 was the last comment there when I started typing!

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawndKIxuJUg-wtTo3fcZB6ChzgLaeCb_82E | September 2, 2010 11:59 AM

I would welcome it if religions (well, at least one of them) provided a purpose. But they repeatedly fail to.
Most religious texts give many details of the works of one god or another and, maybe, some description of an end point - but don't say why the god wants the end point. I mean like, OK, Allah commanded the Pen to write everything that could happen ... or “It was very good”(Genesis) but why? "oh, well" says god, "just felt like moving in a mysterious way... passes the time." Leaving aside that most gods live outside of time, some how... why create time in the first place? What's the ultimate point? We're never told.
And even then, why a god/creator spirit/whatever? Where did he/she/it come from?

I always liked the guys who work on finding the Hamiltonians of all possible Hamiltonians to show that the Hamiltonians in force are the least action of all possible least actions. Like planks constant being the minimum possible energy - the universe exist because you couldn't possibly do less.

Posted by: christophe-thill.myopenid.com | September 2, 2010 12:08 PM

"Where does it come from" is a qustion with a false clarity. If it appears clear to us, it's because it has a definite and useful meaning in everyday life.

Where do you come from? From work, I just hopped on the train, and here I am. Where does wine come from? From grapes. Where do polar bears come from? From the pole. Where does this money come from? Well, I just stole it. Etc.

Because it's meaningful for us in our life, doesn't mean that it can be meaningful in science, or philosophy, or philosophy of science. Why should a question like "where do the laws of physics come from?" absolutely need to make sense? In fact, it doesn't. They come from nowhere. Except if we consider them, not as elements of nature, but of our knowledge. Then we can say that they were discovered by people such as Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc., after much thinking and hard work. But if we're talking, not about the theory of gravity that we teach and use, but about gravity itself, then it comes from nowhere.

Posted by: christophe-thill.myopenid.com | September 2, 2010 12:12 PM

Oh, and by the way: same goes for "purpose". Purpose is a human concept. Extending it to the universe makes no more sense than talking about the universe's happiness or jealousy.

Oh, wait... maybe it was actually about porpoises? Now that would make better sense.

Posted by: Miles670 | September 2, 2010 12:16 PM

What a waste of Dawkins time.

Posted by: Sandi | September 2, 2010 12:21 PM

PZ: I'm not confusing philosophy with science, although the purpose of philosophy is to help us arrive at truth. You stated that science does not teach us that there must be a first cause for everything. I disagree. When I see a baby, I know that it didn't simply materialize into thin air--a biological process created it. Same thing with a rock--a process of some sort created it. The list goes on and on. Please give me an example of something that exists without a first cause. Please give me an example of something that springs into existence on its own without any outside forces or chemicals acting upon it. I don't think you can do it, because science does imply that everything has a first cause. There is no scientific evidence that gravity and the laws of physics are eternal (i.e., always existed and never had a beginning). That sounds like magic to me. And if they did have a beginning, they needed a first cause. Hence, the need for God. It's not a contradiction to believe in God as the first cause, if you believe he is an eternal being who created time and created the laws of physics and lies outside of that realm. As I said before, my faith is as good as yours.

Posted by: Bostonian | September 2, 2010 12:23 PM

@Miles670 #28

What a waste of Dawkins time.

Remember that Richard Dawkins writes books, and is paid for them by a publisher. He also gives lectures. Staying in the public eye on this topic and on subjects related to evolution is part of his livelihood. The same can be said for Stephen Hawking, who does not do much actual science. (Note: I do not mean this as a criticism of either person.)

But I also have the impression Dawkins has a personal passion for this sort of thing. He enjoys being clear headed while people without well supported arguments throw softballs at him. And really, who can blame him? I have the sort of job where I have to produce things and provide services, but I'd much rather read, write and argue about ideas.

Posted by: Ewan R | September 2, 2010 12:28 PM

Please give me an example of something that springs into existence on its own without any outside forces or chemicals acting upon it

of course you could just read the thread

Subatomic particle are observed to constantly flit in and out of existence, with no prior cause.

Posted by: Epinephrine | September 2, 2010 12:30 PM

Sandi:

Please give me an example of something that exists without a first cause.

Please give me an example of something that springs into existence on its own without any outside forces or chemicals acting upon it.

It's not a contradiction to believe in God as the first cause, if you believe he is an eternal being who created time and created the laws of physics and lies outside of that realm.

As I said before, my faith is as good as yours.

Posted by: Miles670 | September 2, 2010 12:31 PM

@Bostonian #28

I can understand that Dawkins enjoys debating, i do it myself and love it but only when the questions posed are intelligible. Every question there either seemed like an evasion or like it could easily be answered by a quick google search. It worries me that when Dawkins is subjected to silly repetative arguments like this he's going to be put off debating altogether having learned nothing from the experience. I for one learned nothing from that, and i'm no scholar.

Posted by: iiandyiiii#0fab0 | September 2, 2010 12:32 PM

Sandi, you're answering your own question! An example of something that exists without a first cause? How about the God you mention just a few sentences later!

No "evidence that gravity and the laws of physics are eternal (i.e., always existed and never had a beginning)"? There's lots of evidence they went back a long, long way. Experiments are being done to refine that knowledge. But you would just rather say, 'cause a question hasn't been answered yet, that God did it. The rationale of the cavemen... "Bolt from sky hit Ogg, Ogg dead now, sky god angry at Ogg. I get Ogg's woman."

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | September 2, 2010 12:35 PM

You stated that science does not teach us that there must be a first cause for everything. I disagree. When I see a baby, I know that it didn't simply materialize into thin air--a biological process created it. Same thing with a rock--a process of some sort created it. The list goes on and on. Please give me an example of something that exists without a first cause. Please give me an example of something that springs into existence on its own without any outside forces or chemicals acting upon it. I don't think you can do it, because science does imply that everything has a first cause.

Put down the fucking crack pipe, junkie: whether or not me, you, PZ, or Dawkins can give an example of something DOES NOT MEAN science implies anything.

There is no scientific evidence that gravity and the laws of physics are eternal (i.e., always existed and never had a beginning). That sounds like magic to me.

What sounds like magic to you is irrelevant.

master of nonengagement.

No fucking kidding, Ichthyic. What a fucking dolt.

Posted by: Ray Moscow | September 2, 2010 12:36 PM

the samurai sword of reason

The butter knife of drunkenness would have more than sufficient for that exchange.

One wishes that the faitheyfolks would come up with something halfway sensible once in a while. Still, it's always good to see Dawkins in action, even though that could not have been much of a challenge.

Posted by: sqlrob | September 2, 2010 12:38 PM

You stated that science does not teach us that there must be a first cause for everything. I disagree.

I'll try to put this in small words so you can understand it.

You have been given examples in this thread and choose to ignore them. That's why we cause theists idiots.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/hairychris444#96384 | September 2, 2010 12:41 PM

@Sandi

Oh please, the whole first cause argument turns to crap due to special pleading....

We know that the natural universe exists. If you're positing natual universe plus then you need to stump up the evidence to prove the extra stuff.

Oh, and personal revelation doesn't count as it's an appeal to authority "I have this feeling and I know that it's right and you must believe me because I'm infallible in knowing that this is from god/whoever".

Hmph.

Posted by: amphiox | September 2, 2010 12:45 PM

Please give me an example of something that springs into existence on its own without any outside forces or chemicals acting upon it.

Virtual particles. For the umpteenth time. Did you even bother to read the responses? Did you fail to understand them?

And why are you fixated on gravity? Gravity did, in fact, have an origin, and the Big Bang theory/Standard Model describes how it came into being quite well.

It's not a contradiction to believe in God as the first cause, if you believe he is an eternal being who created time and created the laws of physics and lies outside of that realm.

So what created the "outside" in which your god resides? And what observation would distinguish between [God(eternal) -> time and the laws of physics -> the universe] and [Time and the laws of physics (eternal) -> the universe]? If there are no observations that can distinguish the difference between two competing theories, then the one with fewer postulates is preferred.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 2, 2010 12:50 PM

The butter knife of drunkenness

I think that's the tool Hitch commonly uses for such engagements.

:)

Posted by: quarky2 | September 2, 2010 12:53 PM

Sandi #31

If your beliefs are not based on evidence, you are free to believe anything, and such beliefs are hardly respectable. Following your line of thinking, what prevents multiple, perhaps an infinite, number of gods always existing. If one can exist without causation, why not a gaggle of gods? And how exactly does the existence of a god confer meaning? Until you explain the purpose of your god's existence, and why the god suddenly decided he needed a universe, you have not explained anything.

Posted by: btj | September 2, 2010 12:57 PM

Why does water freeze? It must be because the creator of the universe likes his Scotch on the rocks and not neat. How else can you explain the fact that you can measure the freezing point and get such consistent results? Unless a magic creature established this law, it wouldn't be possible. Water freezes at 0 C, not 1, or 2, or 312. Coincidence? No, Providence!

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 2, 2010 12:58 PM

That sounds like magic to me. And if they did have a beginning, they needed a first cause. Hence, the need for God. It's not a contradiction to believe in God as the first cause, if you believe he is an eternal being who created time and created the laws of physics and lies outside of that realm. As I said before, my faith is as good as yours.

Posted by: Sastra | September 2, 2010 1:05 PM

Ruth Gledhill: But if believing in God works for me, just as setting my alarm in the morning to get to work on time works, and if not believing in God leads to - well whatever it leads to - I don't see why I should stop believing, just because someone thinks I should.

If you reduce belief in God to a sort of personal therapy, a narrative which helps you to frame your life in a useful sort of way, then you're not really believing that God exists. You're arguing in favor of playacting that it does. And you don't give a damn about whether it does. Use faith as a tool. Or not. Up to you. So leave me alone.

But Ms. Gledhill probably wouldn't really agree with all that. This is the sort of argument that believers trot out when they want critics to step away from an honest discussion and give them a free pass. "Please, I don't really mean it. I believe in God because it works for me. Can't you just live and let live? Can't we move on to something else?"

They don't want respect: they want forbearance.

And the minute the atheist steps out of the room she and others like her go right back to sneering at atheists, how could you be an atheist, God is all around us just look, it's so important to believe, God is real, God exists, the evidence just so obvious to those who aren't blind, it's like believing in love.

Right.

Sorry. Screw that. We know what you say when we're not in the room, and we're not buying the "believing in God works for me please don't hurt me" crap. Stand and make a rational argument, WATB. Stop telling us why you choose to believe, and try to tell us why we ought to believe. You've made God too "important" to play mind games about personal choices and therapeutic benefits with it.

Posted by: MJP | September 2, 2010 1:07 PM

The butter knife of drunkenness would have more than sufficient for that exchange.

Hey, it's better than the Stick of Lies.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/K2PNji0at.txAjzTShOlxwLuFcVVFwbnng--#bd813 | September 2, 2010 1:08 PM

No, God evolved toward the end of the Universe, then extended thru time to regulate the Big Bang.
Wink.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 2, 2010 1:10 PM

It's not a contradiction to believe in God as the first cause, if you believe he is an eternal being who created time and created the laws of physics and lies outside of that realm.

Ladies and Gentlemen step right up. It's only costs your ability to reason and use logic to ride the fantastic Circular God powered merry go round!

As I said before, my faith is as good as yours.

Stupid arguments for stupid people.

Your faith is that you know the answers despite lacking any evidence whatsoever for those answers.

Science doesn't claim to have the answers but does claim to have increasing evidence for things, none of which point to some supernatural being firing up the universe some ~14 Billion years ago. And science works toward finding answers not sitting back it is rocking chair of infallibility on the porch of willful ignorance sipping on a steaming hot cup of I believe it so that settles it.

Do you take milk and honey with your tea Sandi?

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | September 2, 2010 1:10 PM

Sandi @ 31;

When I see a baby, I know that it didn't simply materialize into thin air--a biological process created it. Same thing with a rock--a process of some sort created it. The list goes on and on.

So where, by your definition, is your 'first cause' for either child or rock? 'Mummy and Daddy' or the 'cabbage patch' do not amount to a first cause, neither is geological action or the coalescence of a planet from stellar debris. Remember 'godidit' is not an answer, because by your own logic god requires a first cause of its own. Such a complex being could not have come from nothing, so where is god's god? What about god's, god's, god? And god's, god's, god's god ad nauseam?

Please give me an example of something that exists without a first cause.

Why don't you start by explaining to us how your god supposedly exists without a first cause? If god is exempt from the 'first cause' clause for any reason including a vague appeal to his shiny sky-fairyness, then why should the universe require a first cause? Occam's Razor indicates that your god is simply an unnecessary addition.

I don't think you can do it, because science does imply that everything has a first cause.

I do not think that you understand science or the scientific method very well.

That sounds like magic to me.

And your all-powerful magic man in the sky does not? How is a creator super-consciousness in any way more parsimonious then the proposition the the 'laws' of reality are intrinsic properties?

Hence, the need for God.

Why your god? If we accept this argument of yours for the moment (despite its many and obvious flaws), then it can just as readily be used to demonstrate that Allah is real. Or Odin. Or Zeus. Or Mithras. Or the FSM. Why shouldn't we believe that the universe is run by a a two-party system consisting of the conservative Elder Gods Party lead by Cthulhu (who are all for chaos, bloodshed, theocracy, and tax breaks for the rich), who are balanced by the liberal Pink Quantum Unicorn Party, lead by the FSM (who favour bacon, lesbians and beer fountains)?

Why is your nasty, Bronze Age myth preferable to any of the above options? Why does it have a greater claim to be The Truth(TM)? Why is it more consistent with your (incorrect) assertions about first causes?

It's not a contradiction to believe in God as the first cause, if you believe he is an eternal being who created time and created the laws of physics and lies outside of that realm. As I said before, my faith is as good as yours.

Sorry, if everything needs a first cause, but conveniently god is 'exempt', then this is called special pleading, which is a well recognised logical fallacy. If you accept that god does not need a first cause, then neither does the universe. If you demand a first cause for the universe, then god needs one too.

Posted by: MJP | September 2, 2010 1:18 PM

The first-cause argument is nonsense to anyone who's taken a basic physics course. "Causality" only applies to changes in state (such as acceleration,) not the creation of matter-energy (which is constant.)

Posted by: aviazn | September 2, 2010 1:19 PM

Sandi, when you say that "my faith is as good as yours," am I correct in assuming that the "faith" you're inferring upon atheists is faith in the scientific method, faith that we can still conquer the last remaining spaces of knowledge? If so, I would argue that the scientific method has a proven track record—not just of making people feel fulfilled, but of divining observable truth.

I do agree with you that there are unknowns. For example, the question "What came before the big bang?" could be equally as nonsensical as "What lies north of the North Pole?" But how can we know epistemologically when something has passed into that realm, short of declaring it by fiat?

I would further speculatively argue in your favor (although I would be happy to be refuted) that the oft-cited question "What lies north of the North Pole?" demonstrates not that the question doesn't deserve an answer, but the limitations of the human construct of north. Analogously, "What came before the Big Bang?" is limited by our precept of time. That doesn't mean that nothing exists outside of that construct of spacetime, or that there is nothing to understand outside of that paradigm of thinking. The North Pole is a human construct born from a two-dimensional space defined by longitude and latitude, and similarly, the "beginning of time" is a human construct born from the four-dimensional space of spacetime. But when you reach the North Pole, you have not reached the limit of existence. If it were, we would never have looked up, to the stars.

So yes, there are holes in our knowledge, and even the possibility that there are things beyond the universe that we cannot know. If I understand you correctly, it is this unknown that your God inhabits.

Many people have already pointed out that postulating a god to fill this gap is one more postulate than required; you might respond that Occam's razor is an observation of probability, not a truth in itself, and so it can't rule out a god with 100% probability. But my question is, if I may: If your god serves simply as a placeholder for the unknown, why bother calling it a god? If your god has done nothing more than light the cosmic match, plays no role in designing the results, forgives no sins, enacted no resurrections—why not just call it "the unknown"?

Posted by: Scorpy1 | September 2, 2010 1:21 PM

Even if it didn't have any earth-shattering results, this still seems like a really good idea.

Too often, a newspaper's faith section is given large spreads and is isolated from the debate (except for online comments) and point-counterpoints that you get in the editorial sections.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmKoZZW1bfPWwVICBRt8fSLiYWHHSiKVGk | September 2, 2010 1:30 PM

The first-cause argument is nonsense to anyone who's taken a basic physics course. "Causality" only applies to changes in state (such as acceleration,) not the creation of matter-energy (which is constant.)

Yep. The way I always phrased it was that what we observe as cause-and-effect is a property of the universe. You can never assume that any property of the universe also operates "outside" or "beyond" it, assuming those words are meaningful at all in that context. Saying "what caused the universe?" is sort of like asking "what is gravity like outside of the universe?" It's the fallacious assumption that a property of the universe must exist as part of the explanation for the universe as a whole. Wrong.

Even if the universe does have a "cause" in the way we understand the term, there is no justification for presuming that it must have a cause, a priori. Maybe it doesn't, maybe it does.

Obligatory Carl Sagan quote:

Why should we expect our common sense notions to have any validity in a matter of this sort?

Posted by: Rincewind'smuse | September 2, 2010 1:34 PM

There is no scientific evidence that gravity and the laws of physics are eternal (i.e., always existed and never had a beginning). That sounds like magic to me. And if they did have a beginning, they needed a first cause. Hence, the need for God.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 2, 2010 1:39 PM

The first-cause argument is nonsense to anyone who's taken a basic physics course. "Causality" only applies to changes in state (such as acceleration,) not the creation of matter-energy (which is constant.)

Well "cause" sounds nice when you pair it with "purpose".

Posted by: Katharine | September 2, 2010 1:48 PM

You know, it's really funny how there are some people who can dress up the deepest stupidity in the most florid language. It's a bit like that lipstick-on-a-pig metaphor, except that metaphor is an insult to pigs.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 2, 2010 2:07 PM

If you're willing to believe that gravity just always existed and never had a beginning, then you might as well believe in God for the same reasons.

*drops an apple*

Nope, no god there.

Why do you have trouble with gravity but not with God? Shouldn't your skepticism parlay equally into any uncaused phenomena?

Posted by: bcoppola | September 2, 2010 2:14 PM

The purpose of the Universe is to reward me with all I desire. So far, it's doing a piss poor job. The Universe will be hearing from my lawyer.

Oh, right - thanks to the negligent and heartless Universe, I can't afford a lawyer. Fuck.

Posted by: Praedor | September 2, 2010 2:16 PM

There IS meaning to the universe. The meaning is whatever the individual person places upon it. Thus, there are as many meanings to the universe (and life) as there are people capable of assigning meaning.

Posted by: Rincewind'smuse | September 2, 2010 2:22 PM

Ing@ #85,

Why do you have trouble with gravity but not with God? Shouldn't your skepticism parlay equally into any uncaused phenomena?

Posted by: kieran | September 2, 2010 2:25 PM

Am I the only one who thinks there is no such thing as a "silly question" maybe it's from teaching first years when any form of comunication is amazing and should be encouraged at all costs. These would be first year college students.
Even "silly" questions can teach you alot; even if that is just the person asking it is silly. To paraphrase the NRA questions aren't silly people are!
So I'm against Richard on the "silly question" question.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 2, 2010 2:32 PM

Am I the only one who thinks there is no such thing as a "silly question" maybe it's from teaching first years when any form of comunication is amazing and should be encouraged at all costs. These would be first year college students. Even "silly" questions can teach you alot; even if that is just the person asking it is silly. To paraphrase the NRA questions aren't silly people are! So I'm against Richard on the "silly question" question.

Well there are stupid and silly questions. Sometimes questions asked are not asked in sincerity but as an opening the asker will then use to club the listener over the head with their opinions with no desire or attempt to listen to the answers given.

We see those here frequently.

Posted by: Iain Walker | September 2, 2010 3:08 PM

Sandi (#31):

I'm not confusing philosophy with science

Yes, you bloody well are. You're making a lot of outmoded philosophical assumptions, and then projecting them onto your vague and uninformed grasp of science.

When I see a baby, I know that it didn't simply materialize into thin air--a biological process created it. Same thing with a rock--a process of some sort created it. The list goes on and on. Please give me an example of something that exists without a first cause.

You seem to be making one of two possible errors here (or possibly both, since you do seem very confused):

(a) You're muddling up the notion of everyday proximate causes of specific things with the more specific Aristotelian notion of a "first cause" (which is meant to terminate the regress of past causes by positing something which is not itself caused by anything else) because you don't understand the difference between them.

(b) You do understand the difference between them, but you're committing the common mistake of reasoning that because everything has a cause, there must be some cause that is the cause of everything else. I.e., you're committing the Quantifier Shift Fallacy.

You also overlook the possibility of an infinite regress of past causes, in which case there would not, by definition, be any first cause. An example of something lacking a first cause would then be: "Everything."

Please give me an example of something that springs into existence on its own without any outside forces or chemicals acting upon it.

Examples were given by previous commenters (e.g., virtual particles). Do please try and keep up.

There is no scientific evidence that gravity and the laws of physics are eternal (i.e., always existed and never had a beginning). That sounds like magic to me.

Yes, Sandi, that's correct. Any idea that you can't be bothered to wrap your head around must be magic. Well done.

And if they did have a beginning, they needed a first cause.

Non sequitur. At most, they would need a proximate cause (or causes). However, that cause might still admit of a further proximate cause (or causes) itself. So even if the laws of physics haven't always obtained, it doesn't follow that what actually led to them is itself the terminus of the explanatory regress. You still haven't even begun to establish the necessity for a first cause (nor indeed have you established that anything that has a beginning needs a cause of any kind, proximate or ultimate).

Hence, the need for God.

No, hence the desirability of some parsimonious explanation (which God isn't) for why matter and energy exhibit the regularities of behaviour that they do.

It's not a contradiction to believe in God as the first cause, if you believe he is an eternal being who created time and created the laws of physics and lies outside of that realm.

Yes, it is. You're asserting that on the one hand that God is non-temporal, and on the other hand that he has properties (i.e., agency) which presuppose temporality. An agent is something that thinks, believes, desires, acts, behaves etc. All these activities can only be meaningfully ascribed to something that is extended in time and so capable of undergoing changes in state. So your belief is fundamentally self-contradictory. You might just as well attribute the creation of the universe to the square root of five, for all the sense that you're making.

Then there's the similar problem of rendering intelligible the notion of a timeless God who constitutes a "cause". Causation is another temporal concept, since it is fundamentally about relations between events. Something that is "outside" time cannot be a cause of anything, because it bears no temporal relation to any putative effect. So however you want to conceive of the laws of physics as owing their reality to God, it is not by dint of God "causing" them, at least not in the normal sense of the term.

And if that weren't enough, you still have the problem of explaining how this putative deity of yours "created" time or the laws of physics. Unless you can do that, "Goddidit" is no explanation at all. It's just content-free hand-waving.

Finally, even if you can explain the mechanism of God's creation, you do not have any guarantee that you've established God as a "final cause".

The reason being that agency presupposes not just the passage of time, but the existence of a framework of law-like regularity within which the agent acts. I.e., in order for an agent to justifiably suppose that a given action will lead to the desired outcome, it has to be the case that action and outcome can be reliably and predictably correlated. Similarly with intention and action. If every time I tried to do something, something different happened, I simply wouldn't be able to act at all. The very idea of intentional action (i.e., deliberately trying to bring about Y by doing X) would be meaningless.

So if God is meant to be an agent, God must himself be subject to certain law-like regularities such that if God intends to bring about Y, he will predictably succeed in bringing about Y rather than any other state of affairs. Which means that if you invoke God in order to explain the natural regularities described by the laws of physics, you have only done so by invoking another kind of regularity which is no less mysterious than that you were seeking to explain in the first place. And God's agency can't be invoked to explain his own law-like regularities, because his agency is logically dependent on them, and not the other way round.

You might try to argue that this is a brute fact about God's nature that stands in no further need of explanation, but we could just as plausibly argue exactly the same thing about the laws of physics vis a vis the physical world. In short, it really doesn't look too good for God as a first cause/ultimate explanation.

Posted by: Danno Davis | September 2, 2010 3:39 PM

"Ruth, that won't do."

Priceless. Damn near choked on my milk.

Posted by: legistech | September 2, 2010 3:53 PM

that's pretty damn close to where Ken Miller's theosophy is right now.

Wow. Some people will do anything to continue entertaining their god-belief.

Posted by: JBlilie | September 2, 2010 4:02 PM

She never answered Dr. Dawkins' question about the penalty for conversion to Christianity for Muslims. Duck and dodge.

Posted by: Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism. | September 2, 2010 4:14 PM

@ Sandi 31

When I see a baby, I know that it didn't simply materialize into thin air--a biological process created it. Same thing with a rock--a process of some sort created it. The list goes on and on. Please give me an example of something that exists without a first cause. Please give me an example of something that springs into existence on its own without any outside forces or chemicals acting upon it. I don't think you can do it, because science does imply that everything has a first cause. There is no scientific evidence that gravity and the laws of physics are eternal (i.e., always existed and never had a beginning). That sounds like magic to me. Hence, the need for God. It's not a contradiction to believe in God as the first cause, if you believe he is an eternal being who created time and created the laws of physics and lies outside of that realm. As I said before, my faith is as good as yours.

Hmm... Let me see if I've got this straight... You think eternal laws of physics sound like magic, but invoking an intelligent entity for whom there is no origin, explanation or evidence to be your first cause isn't?

No, your faith isn't as good as science, and just because a familiar, agency based explanation of the origin of the universe might satisfy you, doesn't make it logical or scientifically sound.

Now about that God of yours; where did it come from again, and why?

Posted by: Sandi | September 2, 2010 4:18 PM

Sorry for my absence--unlike most of you, I have a life and am not in front of my computer all day. I asked for an example of matter that sprang into existence on its own without any other force or chemical acting upon it, and several of you called me a dolt and cited subatomic particles as such an example. If they are composed of matter, the matter had to be created initially. And I believe there are numerous theories about them, including the fact that multiple universes exists and that when a subatomic particle "disappears" and "appears," it is traveling between universes. Therefore, it is not truly springing in and out of existence; it is merely traveling. And for those who think the "Big Bang" refutes my argument, you're not even in the right ball park. Obviously, the logical question is: what set the big bang into motion? What was the initial cause of it? You can't get something from nothing. As for the universe being always in existence (as some of you have said), then why is the universe expanding? Please don't bother with further arguments, as none of you has refuted me sufficiently and I'm bored with you--I'll be signing off. You should open your mind and use logic and philosophy once in a while, instead of blindly hoping that all answers can be found in a test tube. Your ad hominem insults might entertain you, but they are not at all convincing.

Posted by: Travis | September 2, 2010 4:30 PM

Sandi, please learn what ad hominem attacks are. Just because people are mean to you, are insult you, does not mean they are using an ad hominem. Most people here gave you plenty of reasons about why they thought you were wrong, about how you ignored everything that was said, and about how silly your arguments were. They also were sometimes mean about it. Ad hominem does not mean what you think it means.

Posted by: amphiox | September 2, 2010 4:32 PM

re #107:

First you insinuate that those responding to you, most far more politely than the tone of your comments deserve, don't have lives, and then you accuse them of ad hominem (which by the way does not mean what you imply it to mean)?

Epic fail.

Good riddance to you.

Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies! | September 2, 2010 4:34 PM

Not everyone has a higher degree and it's important to note that even the misinformed vote.

Posted by: MJP | September 2, 2010 4:41 PM

Am I the only one who thinks there is no such thing as a "silly question" maybe it's from teaching first years when any form of comunication is amazing and should be encouraged at all costs. These would be first year college students. Even "silly" questions can teach you alot; even if that is just the person asking it is silly. To paraphrase the NRA questions aren't silly people are! So I'm against Richard on the "silly question" question.

Think about loaded questions (which were the kinds of questions that were directed to Dawkins.) Loaded questions can be silly or nasty, depending on the loaded presupposition.

Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies! | September 2, 2010 4:42 PM

It simply popped into existence. Somewhere nearby there's a matching antimime, running for its life.

Posted by: BlueIndependent | September 2, 2010 4:46 PM

OK, if that's the smartest bit of inquiry in the whole exchange, I won't bother. What idiot has the temerity to ask what the purpose of the universe is? Does this person ask whatever unintelligible nonsense enters his mind? And even if a creator does exist, WTF is the rest of the universe for anyways?

Where do the laws of physics come from? A slightly more important question, but practically I would think that the answer to that is nearly as useless to us at the moment. And, again, even if a creator entity exists from which the laws originate, how does that make them suddenly more important or useful? What would knowing the starting point get us?

Lastly, intelligibility of the universe? I must ask, by what measure? Why is pi 3.14~? This question assumes another human-born pattern upon everything that's out there. A pretty magnificent claim to be sure. And yet again one of Einstein's quotes is mined by a theist to attribute to something meaning other than what he intended.

Posted by: Travis | September 2, 2010 4:49 PM

Viki, #118, that is sadly very true. I have a friend from my undergraduate days in physics. He is currently working on a PhD in the field as well. However he is also a tarot master and his posters had statements I would have never expected from someone studying physics. He admitted on them that despite the evidence saying tarot does not work, he knows it works.

Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies! | September 2, 2010 4:52 PM

And people can get advanced degrees in physics and other sciences and still hold all sorts of prejudices.

As one of my much older friend said,
"Life is but a stage, and we merely actors."
Not compartmentalization, simply putting up an act.

Posted by: MadScientist | September 2, 2010 5:00 PM

I got onto the transcript via Jerry Coyne's site. It was painful to read; that femmegodbot is such an airhead. People also consistently fail to understand that god is not an answer - he's a lame-ass excuse to not even think of a sensible answer. "God" is religion's answer to everything - there can be no further thought or answer once someone says goddidit. God is an intellectual dead end - he literally leads nowhere (which is not surprising because he is nothing - I mean he doesn't even exist). In contrast, scientific inquiry leads us to a greater understanding of things and the discovery that there are other fine details which we do not understand (and which we proceed to investigate). So when Dawkins writes that "god creates more questions than he answers", it is in a very different sense from the statement that "scientific inquiry leads us to more questions". It reminds me of a joke I read many decades ago:

Nothing is better than a big juicy steak.
Breadcrumbs are better than nothing.
Breadcrumbs are better than a big juicy steak.

The godbots do not understand that science uncovers more questions which have a very good chance of being answered --- or, more properly, uncovers more deficits in our knowledge which may eventually be filled. (Hey, we have to recognize that there may be limitations to what we can achieve - and physics has already solidly established many such limitations.) God however, can only ever introduce more questions which absolutely cannot be answered. For example - who made god? Why, no one of course. How do we know that? Well, god says so. Oh really ...

Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies! | September 2, 2010 5:03 PM

He admitted on them that despite the evidence saying tarot does not work, he knows it works.

Posted by: sendittodevnull | September 2, 2010 5:12 PM

I don't know how he stays so calm in the line of that continual onslaught of stupid repetitive bullshit. I'd just be yelling at them inside 5 minutes that they were all fucking morons and that stupid question has been answered 1000 times already FFS!
I loved the god of the gaps in chemistry thing, especially the 'nitrogen has no human use' thing (I'm guessing someone's never heard of protein ... or put fertiliser on their garden either ... or for that matter ever heard of explosives/heart medicine. Rolls eyes, headdesk, facepalm)

Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies! | September 2, 2010 5:13 PM

They won't collide. The original mime, having strongly interacted with a bikerbootboson, is no longer on its original trajectory. It disappeared in another direction, wearing its sad-mime face and pretending to whimper.

Posted by: MadScientist | September 2, 2010 5:14 PM

Oh, and on the issue of stupid questions, I'd just like to say:

There are no such things as stupid questions, only stupid people.

Well, that's my worthless platitude of the day.

Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies! | September 2, 2010 5:23 PM

Curiosity.
What does PZ Myers and Richard Dawkin's view on a Spinoza's god.

Also might be helpful with a quick summary, because the most that I can understand is that Spinoza's god at the very basic that god is the very law/nature of the universe.

Posted by: Iris | September 2, 2010 5:29 PM

fischman7:

There is though a Master Planner that orchestrates our journey. We know that all existance has a purpose if so.... we dont know, but we will find out many many years from now

For real? Or just a New Age Poe?

Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies! | September 2, 2010 5:36 PM

#137

For real? Or just a New Age Poe?

Posted by: te24hours | September 2, 2010 5:55 PM

I thought that, by definition, if you can't tell if it is mocking or serious, it's a poe. Am I wrong? I hate using made up terms incorrectly.

Posted by: Tulse | September 2, 2010 6:06 PM

It reminds me of a joke I read many decades ago:

Nothing is better than a big juicy steak.
Breadcrumbs are better than nothing.
Breadcrumbs are better than a big juicy steak.

Interestingly, I heard it this way:

Nothing is better than god.
Beer is better than nothing.
Beer is better than god.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 2, 2010 6:13 PM

Oo, let me try:

There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.
Budweiser is better than nothing.
Therefore, uh, Budweiser is better than anything that isn't like a Grateful Dead concert.

There is wisdom in there somewhere.

Posted by: sqlrob | September 2, 2010 6:45 PM

Please don't bother with further arguments, as none of you has refuted me sufficiently

You have been completely and totally refuted by every poster here. You have yet to present any arguments that haven't been refuted.

PZ, I nominate Sandi for the dungeon.

Posted by: amphiox | September 2, 2010 7:06 PM

Spinoza's god is for all practical intents and purposes the universe by another name.

Having fewer letters, I suppose it is of some utility to people who tweet alot.

Posted by: seculargaytheist | September 2, 2010 8:27 PM

Schrödinger's cat says the universe wasn't necessarily created by Dog.

Posted by: Teshi | September 2, 2010 8:31 PM

You've got to feel bad for Richard Dawkins. Whenever there's a thing about god or religion they haul him out to answer questions like, "Why is nitrogen?"

The format was just terrible: there has to be far less back and forth for a formal online debate to work. Questions have to be submitted and time given for the people to answer them or it's just a fractured jumble of voices.

Posted by: fcaccin | September 2, 2010 8:35 PM

Well, that's my worthless platitude of the day.

ahem...

Posted by: ConcernedJoe | September 2, 2010 8:48 PM

Speaking to the Sandis out there (and real scientists can add reality and comments because I am giving a "common-sense" or "lay persons's" perspective):

The Universe, this or any, are zero-sum games. Nothing ever gained - nothing ever really lost. They contract to virtual nothingness - where time may cease to exists - and the laws of matter and energy have no common meaning - all universes may in a common view become effectually "nothing" inevitably. But they really have to end - a flaw in the nothingness - something begins time again and thus the matter and energy defined by it and that in return define it back in return. Out of that nothingness a Universe is born!

My point - the process is infinite (never really ending - at least seems logic that is could.

Now Sandi as you go out somehow to some point in this infinite process and look back - do you see a real start point!? Or is that start an illusion of a start in this infinite process looking backwards? If going forward is infinite - why isn't going backwards?

I am sure there are more true science discussions of this for real - but none of them need get hung up on "something from nothing" - mathematically it is not necessary to worry about it I suspect.

And a prime intelligence force with intentions and purpose - not necessary and indeed based on available evidence - just plain silly. If if such exists or existed - why should it be your god?

You say use logic and reason - well if I apply about as much as you are applying and kick it up one grade level that we are "brains in bottles" - or minions of Darth Vader's boss - or some fantasy of some super computer seem much more realistic to me - at least something like reality can be associated with those concepts - and not just goat herders fantasies and the musing of pre-science philosophers often with political agendas of the day.

Posted by: speedweasel | September 2, 2010 8:56 PM

"I foresee a problem. Soon creationist might want physics to not be taught in schools because it doesn't include their god."

I've always said that the creationist rejection of evolution was pretty arbitrary. There is so much of reality in direct conflict with the creationist world-view, I'm amazed that they aren't attacking all of the sciences equally.

Still, it's pretty hard to deny easily demonstrable scientific principles, even if they do cramp the style of your religious belief. Evolution is an easier target for them given the time-scale on which it occurs makes it hard (but not impossible) to observe in the lab.

Posted by: ivo | September 2, 2010 10:33 PM

the samurai sword of reason

For when Occam Razor just isn't enough blade :)

Indeed.
I propose Dawkins Katana for the principle according to which one should immediately and mercilessly -- but civilly and, if possible, with an Oxford accent -- shred to pieces any fatuous assertion that comes up in a debate, regardless of its traditional support or popular appeal.

Posted by: Coryat | September 2, 2010 11:24 PM

Rincewind'smuse asked where the phrase 'in a nutshell' came from.

"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count my selfe a King of infinite space."

Hamlet.

Actually Shakespeare talking about the paradox of the infinite being confined in an infinitesimal space (the nutshell) seems quite apt, given the circumstances.

Posted by: latsot | September 3, 2010 2:57 AM

kieran:

Am I the only one who thinks there is no such thing as a "silly question" maybe it's from teaching first years when any form of comunication is amazing and should be encouraged at all costs. These would be first year college students.
Even "silly" questions can teach you alot; even if that is just the person asking it is silly. To paraphrase the NRA questions aren't silly people are!
So I'm against Richard on the "silly question" question.

You're confused about what properties a question needs to have to be silly and you're ignoring context. Are you *really* unable to think of a single silly question? How about "why do quarks taste purple?" or "Why does the universe smell of parsley?" The former is silly because it doesn't make any sense, the latter because it is based on a demonstrably false assumption. So to ask those questions is plainly silly.

However, if a child asked those questions in the context of learning about what questions are silly, then they wouldn't be silly. Obviously.

If you're interviewing a politician about unemployment figures and you ask her to prove that aliens invented toast, that would be a silly question. It wouldn't contribute anything to the debate and it would assume things about aliens and toast that the politician and most of the audience probably wouldn't agree with and which couldn't be justified in any case. But the question might conceivably have value in a logic or debating class, who knows?

There are many more silly questions than sensible ones. Enticing and encouraging children to ask questions is a necessary and noble thing, but do we really want to encourage them to ask any question at all, regardless of how little sense it makes? Or do we want to teach them to understand when they are asking questions that are useful, inciteful, profound etc?

Posted by: KG | September 3, 2010 4:08 AM

But there is no denying that there is a plan,that make all things what and why they are.- fischman7

I deny it, thus proving you wrong.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/O.jullMj0I2VvJaxMMVeNKSfOPf73voLSxJAe9PdlOWwi8Y-#258ec | September 3, 2010 4:32 AM

I took Fischman7 and concernedjoe as just funny
as being serious in an over the top nonsensical realistic jive way.
with homage to Lord Buckley and Captain Beefheart

uncle frogy

Posted by: kieran | September 3, 2010 5:09 AM

Okay I'll agree to silly questions, but I feel the context is important. If I'm teaching most if not all the questions are intially a little silly but over the time of a course the students learn to ask more difficult and more sensible questions.
Classic example from Kayaking, do we still go paddling if it's raining? The concern is that they are going to get wet, but in Ireland rivers rise and fall due to rainfall. So the answer comes in two parts, you are going to get wet no matter what the weather is that's why you wear wetsuits and then you can explain about how rivers in Ireland react to rainfall.
So I always think a question is worth asking no matter how silly it may seem.
Answers on the other hand have to make sense even if that answer to a silly question is to show why it is silly by showing an example of a sensible question. While what purpose does a mountain have? is a silly question your answer won't be.
I do get the point of the leading silly question.

Posted by: Felix | September 3, 2010 5:58 AM

Ah, but doesn't Occam's Razor state that the smallest blade should always be preferred?

No. It states that the smallest blade that is adequate for the task should be preferred. Adequacy being an expression of required energy input.
With the blade, be sure to carry a torch and a cudgel. Some theists are so slimy they never notice when they've been sliced to bits. Sometimes it takes fire. Some are too thick to be damaged by blade or torch - for those, use the cudgel. A single use of an expletive can be a nice cudgel.
Those of us who have been called to the task of hunting nonsense need to carry a veritable arsenal of bullshit destruction measures.

Posted by: funnyatheists | September 3, 2010 6:47 AM

Oh brother... that debate gave me a dumpiphany. :(...

Posted by: KG | September 3, 2010 7:01 AM

funnyatheists,
Aristotle and Aquinas are significant if you want to understand the history of philosophy. That's all. Their philosophical systems were abandoned by all but Catholic apologists centuries ago, for very good reasons.

Posted by: funnyatheists | September 3, 2010 7:10 AM

KG,

They are more significant than what your attempted hand-waving tries to suggest.

Posted by: Owlmirror | September 3, 2010 7:22 AM

[Aristotle and Aquinas] are more significant than what your attempted hand-waving tries to suggest.

Funny indeed you should say that -- since the fundamentals of their philosophy are nothing more that profoundly-worded logically-deficient hand-waving.

Why do people give so much credence to people who thought that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and that flies were spontaneously generated by rotting meat? They couldn't get empirically observable facts right; why are their even less intelligible attempts to apply intuition to metaphysics supposed to be still valid?

Posted by: John Morales | September 3, 2010 7:28 AM

Aristotelian Physics is as relevant today as is Aristotelian Metaphysics.

Posted by: John Morales | September 3, 2010 7:31 AM

funnyatheists, you forget where you are.

You have claims, make them in your own words. Someone may amuse themselves then.

(PS Aristotle has been done to death.)

Posted by: Iain Walker | September 3, 2010 8:04 AM

funnyatheists (176):

Dawkins should really read a bit more about philosophy, especially Aristotle and Aquinas.

Maybe. But if he did, I doubt he'd be any more impressed with them than the majority of philosophers are these days. If there is a version of the cosmological argument with any merit at all, then it isn't Aristotle's version (based on his flawed physics) or any of Aquinas's versions (with their non sequiturs and question begging). KG is entirely right - their arguments are of historical interest only. Their only practical use these days is purely pedagogical - philosophy lecturers throw them to 1st year undergraduates so that they can work out what is wrong with them.

He should also try and understand the difference between hylemorphism and mechanism.

Yes, I'm sure that a detailed grasp of Aristotle's outmoded version of substance theory would cure Dawkins of his atheistic ways in no time.

Oh, sorry. None of us were supposed to know what "hylemorphism" meant, right?

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 3, 2010 8:08 AM

Check out systems biology. Check out Gene ontology. It makes extensive use of Aristotle's ideas about universals and particulars, species-genus, substance vs accident etc.

No, while Aristotle started an official organized taxonomy he is no means the only one, or even the first one. Even the bible takes a stab at it dividing life between plant, animal, Man. and Clean, Unclean. They have bats as birds btw.

Aristotle was off...damn off. How off? Well lets see, he had spiders as having 6 legs and women having less teeth than man. Any idiot can check this, yet he never thought to actually make sure he was right about anything. His ancient accomplishments aside, I don't think we should take him as an authority on a consistent empirical basis.

Modern Taxonomy incidentally ignores all of Aristotles mistakes and original classifications. We have domains, which he never conceived of, and base it on genetics and relatedness now rather than "it done der looks similar to me" methods of grouping things together.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | September 3, 2010 9:06 AM

funnyatheists,

Check out systems biology. Check out Gene ontology. It makes extensive use of Aristotle's ideas about universals and particulars, species-genus, substance vs accident etc.

Like KG, I have a bit of experience with formal ontologies, and this sounds basically wrong to me.

In particular, the whole Aristotelian substance vs. accident thing is a mess, AIUI, and KG is right that the Ship of Theseus problem is relevant---in general, there simply is not objective fact about when something ceases to be the same individual thing, or the same kind of thing, in cases that the ontology was not designed to address.

Classical ideas about Ideal forms and formal and final causation and so on are pretty well out the window. Sure, we have some concepts with vague similarities, for some purposes, but you seem to be missing the forest for the trees, especially when it comes to biology.

One of the philosophically important aspects of Darwin's theory of evolution was to throw classical theories of categories out the window, using the most important examples that drove the creation of those theories in the first place. (The biological kinds that inspired much of classical theorizing about kinds---why are there different kinds of animals and plants, and what makes them develop in characteristic ways for their kinds?)

What makes a canid a canid is not a matter of participation in some Ideal form, or of having some sort of formal or final causation going on. Species are not a matter of essences or substances in any classical sense, and are negatively and historically defined. What makes "canid" a "kind" is just a historical fact about descent---canids are more closely related to each other than to any other surviving animals, because of which other animals died. Species are an artifact pruning of the historical tree of descent.

(E.g., all living cats are more closely related to each other than to anything else living, so that's a good thing to call a "kind.")

Likewise, what makes an individual organism develop and behave according to its kind isn't a special kind of causation. It's a program of sorts, in its genes, and that program is executed entirely according to the principle of efficient causation.

There's no ideal essence or spooky formal or final causation going on. Lamarck was wrong, and Darwin was right.

In many cases we can "carve nature at its joints," e.g., noticing that all surviving cats are fairly closely related, and all surviving dogs are likewise related, and neither "kind" is as closely related to the other, but all of them are more closely related to each other and to bears than to lizards or rhododendrons. We can derive historically contingent, approximately hierarchical graphs of natural kinds.

We can also explain that entirely in terms of a single fundamental kind of causation---regular old efficient causation.

And it doesn't always work. Sometimes clear-cut historical "kind" boundaries don't emerge, as in the case of ring species---e.g., A and B can interbreed, and B and C can interbreed, but A and C can't. There's just a cloud of more-or-less related stuff, with no good place to draw a species boundary, because there are no essences that distinguish types, just history, and history doesn't give you a clear distinction, because it didn't prune the tree in the right way to give clear clusters of relatedness.

We do have the modern idea of attractors in phase spaces, a la complexity theory and chaos theory. (For example, predator/prey and parasite/host relationships evolving over and over again.) If you back way off and squint, that looks sorta like a different, higher-level kind of causation, but it really isn't a classical "different kind" of causation; it emerges naturally as a higher-level regularity entirely due to the action of plain old (efficient) causation. All apparently different kinds of causation---and apparent "essences" of kinds---reduce to efficient causation.

Plato and Aristotle were really smart guys, no doubt about it. But given that we understand evolution and attractors entirely in terms of efficient causation, they're of mostly historical interest. The most interesting things about Plato and Aristotle are how, despite being really smart guys, they made basic mistakes that we recognize now, especially about ideals and essences.

Posted by: Ewan R | September 3, 2010 10:03 AM

. If you want more, specify how they are significant and why Dawkins should learn more about them.

And also demonstrate that he hasn't learned about them - I'm pretty sure given Dawkins background and education that he is incredibly well versed in Aristotle and Aquinas and that he just discards them as utterly meaningless in the context of any debate about reality as they've been dealt with.

Posted by: KG | September 3, 2010 10:19 AM

Paul W.,
Sorry about the blockquote failure, here it is again.

I'll refrain from reopening our dispute about whether the genome is a program! (If only because in retrospect, that's less useful than asking in what specific ways it (a) resembles and (b) differs from a program in the sense of something a programmer writes.) However, I'll take this opportunity of responding to a couple of points you made at the end of the first Kurzweil thread (which I hadn't read until just now).

I think the brain is a computer, but I certainly acknowledge that it's an embedded, embodied, situated, and social computer. I don't see a problem with that, for my position.

It's unclear by this stage what you mean by "a computer". If you just mean "something that in some sense processes information", then sure, the brain is a computer. So is a rock rolling down a hill, "processing the information" it receives from the environment on the way. But such a definition is useless. The brain is, in evolutionary terms, about autonomous, self-directed activity in the physical and social worlds, which no current day computer is.

I said:

The fact that these layers are cleanly separated, however, while they are not separated in the brain, is of considerable philosophical significance.

You questioned why I considered this philosophically significant. The answer: because you cannot "skim off" the information processing layer, analyse and understand it in isolation, or transfer it from one piece of hardware to another.

Posted by: bornatheist | September 3, 2010 10:27 AM

#5

The naive assumption that everything must have a purpose is what gave us astrology. Primitive man didn't look at the stars and ask "what are they", they looked at the stars and asked "what are they for?"

Dr. I. Needtob Athe,

Astrology? Do you perhaps mean Astronomy? And, even if they wondered what the stars were for, doesn't mean man operates on purpose. Hopefully you realize that.

#9

You didn't address the second question at all, PZ.(And neither can Hawkings.) How did the laws of physics originate? It is insufficient to simply declare that the law of gravity can make "nothing turn into something." Who created the law of gravity? Or, phrased differently, how did gravity come into existence? Science teaches us that there must be a first cause for everything. If you're willing to believe that gravity just always existed and never had a beginning, then you might as well believe in God for the same reasons. Either way, you're believing something on Faith and without scientific proof to back it up. How did mathematical order and orderly physical laws spring into existence from nothing? Can't happen. Gravity, stars, and even atoms had to have a beginning--something cannot come from nothing. If you want to take something on Faith, then my faith is as good as yours.

Sandi, Sandi, Sandi...

The laws of physics originated when man invented them, however the physical nature of the universe would have been here with or without us. Gravity is not a being, it didn't come into existance. It is a force that is a property of matter and space. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in any gods due to lack of evidence. Creationists have zero proof so far. Science doesn't know how the universe came to be, but as it developed, so did gravity.

You, Sandi, are dishonestly accepting faith as an answer to how everything got started. Atheists and Scientists do not make such ridiculous claims. For the record, evolution is not a theory of how life started. Abiogenesis is a theory of life from non life. It is the best explanation of how life got here that we have. And, they have had results in life from nonlife lately. Google it.

Your bible is a sad piece of work, it gives no explanation of how everything came to be, just that it did. Science requires far more than that; to start with, evidence. Neither Atheists nor scientists make claims that the universe always existed. We also don't make claims that it did not. You are asserting we do, which is not true and turns your argument into a strawman. Your statements show that you are not educated in science. So, until you are, you will not understand much beyond that a skydaddy just did it all, end of story. Science requires evidence. We may never know how everything came to be, but science is far closer than any religion developed 3000 yrs ago by goat herders.

My recommendation, if you really want to learn what it is scientists and atheists are talking about, go here: http://www.atheist-experience.com/archive and start watching all the past episodes. (You can skip over the announcements at the beginning, which often take 5 or 6 mins).

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | September 3, 2010 10:35 AM

@197

Presumably you noticed the word "naive" in there right? Try re-reading that post.

Posted by: co | September 3, 2010 10:36 AM

Pardon for my blockquote failure in 198.

Posted by: hyperdeath | September 3, 2010 11:39 AM

funnyatheists:

Dawkins should really read a bit more about philosophy, especially Aristotle and Aquinas.

From what I've read of Dawkins, he does have a good working knowledge of philosophy. Unlike you, he has the added benefit of having understood it.

P.S. Did you copy the idea for your blog from The Onion's editorial cartoon?

Posted by: Paul W., OM | September 3, 2010 11:51 AM

Damn it people. genome coding proteins is no more a program compiling data than a slinky falling down a flight of stairs is.

Damn it Ing, of course it's not. The expression of genes by transcribing to a protein isn't "compiling data," it's interpreting instructions. Mostly.

But if you meant

genes being transcribed to generate proteins is no more interpreting instructions than a slinky falling down a flight of stairs is

you're full of shit.

I could as easily say

damn it people, voltages and charges varying in some analog components is no more interpreting instructions than a slinky falling down a flight of stairs is

with equal validity.

And I'd be wrong.

You don't seem to understand what computation is, and until you show you do, your assertions that X is not computation (or "compiling") won't carry much weight.

Do you even know the difference between an interpreter and a compiler? Did you know that interpreters can be physical objects?

Posted by: Paul W., OM | September 3, 2010 11:59 AM

Shit. Blockquote fail, and a doubled word typo:

that was supposed to be:

But such a definition is useless. The brain is, in evolutionary terms, about autonomous, self-directed activity in the physical and social worlds, which no current day computer is.

Well, sure. I'm not saying that the brain is just like any particular other computer, much less any particular other computer we've built to date. That would be silly. The fact that it's a way fancy "computer" doesn't mean that it isn't literally a computer.

---

Oh, and I forgot to point out that Roombas are "autonomous" in a key sense; they go about their business without talking to anybody. Of course, they do it according to a program-ish thing designed by a human programmer, but similar constraints apply to organisms' autonomy w.r.t. evolution.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 3, 2010 12:09 PM

ANd the whole a code language implies a creator part. Driving home that biochemistry is the same as any other chemistry and runs by the same 'rules' is an important distinction the public needs.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 3, 2010 12:18 PM

I didn't read the original thread so I clearly am not working on the same definitions.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 3, 2010 12:53 PM

@212

ok yeah i withdraw my objection. What you said was exactly what I've tried to argue through chemistry. There you go.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | September 3, 2010 1:03 PM

My only complaint is that I don't feel the analogy fits well.

I think part of the problem is that you think I'm making an analogy. I'm not.

I'm not saying that the genome is like a prototypical program of the familiar sort. (In a structured language, for a binary von Neumann machine.) It's quite different in many interesting ways, so that is certainly confusing.

I'm saying that the genome literally is a program of an unfamiliar sort---specifically a rule set for an asynchronous, massively parallel and distributed forward-chaining analog-valued production system---just as a cell literally is a machine of a very snazzy sort that's unfamiliar to people who only know a little about clocks and automobiles. It's a fancy biochemical machine, but still a machine.

Posted by: KG | September 3, 2010 1:22 PM

Paul W.,

Don't have time for more now, but I think our differences are perhaps mostly about the use of words. I wasn't aware of the Roomba specifically, although I have a bit of (out of date) knowledge about behaviour-based robotics. I'd say the Roomba's brain is much more like an organism's brain than a digital computer is, because of the way it uses the external world to guide its behaviour. We have taken this further by the extensive use of cognitive prostheses. Oddly enough, I was going to make the point about universal computers not actually existing (which you made in your last comment on the Kurzweil thread) at one point in that argument.

Posted by: JBlilie | September 3, 2010 2:37 PM

Dear Sandi @9, 31, and 107

It seems like you have run away. But, anyway, ths point is not to convert the hard-core faithful. It is to raise the consciouness of any bystanders, if possible.

Therefore:

The reason Hawking’s pronouncement is important is that it goes right to the heart of the only plausible argument for the existence of a deistic sort of god: The fact that you can’t disprove, logically, the existence of some kind of creator god that poofs the universe into being and them retires forever. This god is not the one that religious people (at least the overwhelming majority of them) worship. This argument is also useless as a concept, since it only tells us the limitations of logic and maybe evidence as well, and makes no positive statement about anything real.

You are recapitulating Aquinas’s cosmological argument. You should look it up and read the refutations of it. It goes basically like this:

1. Everything must have a cause
2. There cannot be an infinite regression of causes
3. Therefore there exists(ed) a first cause, which did not have a cause
4. This first cause is (my particular) god

The logical fallacy here should be obvious. If everything must have a cause, then a god must also have a cause. Otherwise, the first premise is false and the argument fails. And if the first premise is deleted, then the second premise is false and the argument fails. These are the basic rules of logic. The only escape is to claim that the god in question is somehow different from everything else and therefore doesn’t need a cause. It should be obvious that this is a logical fallacy as well: assuming as a premise that which the argument purports to prove.

Shorter and clearer version of the argument: Everything has a cause except this one thing doesn’t and I call it my God, so there!

Even if this argument were sound (it’s very far from it), it would only prove a first cause of some sort. It would in no way prove a god. It would in no way prove that the first cause is your god (and not Thor, Zeus, Kronos, Mithras, Baal, Ganesh, or Shiva).

You can say that you choose to call this first cause god (or whatever). Well, OK, but why should I care about that? You can call and imaginary concept anything you like. It shows nothing about the real world. If you are conjuring up imaginary concepts and entities, well, that’s OK, that might be kind of fun; but again, why should I care? It says nothing about the real world. You say your one god (though most Christians say He has three parts, but let’s leave that aside) made the universe. Others say many gods participated. How should an outsider choose amongst these kinds of magic? None of you provide any evidence for your gods, so none look even mildly plausible to me.

No one has ever shown that the second premise is true. It may be that time/space/energy/matter (I’ll call the fabric of the universe) has always been. If you claim one thing that has always been or does not require a cause, then it makes more sense to apply those properties to something we know exists in the first place: The universe and its properties.

Everything in your first post falls into the first cause argument, except for your assertion that science has faith and that yours is just as good as ours. First, you have to show that science has faith (you haven’t) and then you would have to show some sort of equivalence.

Logical proofs that do not incorporate evidence from the real world can only show themselves to be internally consistent. They incapable of proving anything about the real world. They are parlor games, not science.

Proof works in mathematics because mathematics can exist only in human heads as concepts. Non-Euclidean geometry will show this to you. Mathematics need only be internally consistent to be of interest to mathematicians. Some math is useful for solving real world problems, some isn’t. Some math can be used to help describe aspects of the real world.

You come to this discussion stating that certain things are or are not logical and/or scientific. When you do that, you are agreeing to the rules of logic and evidence. When you violate those rules, then your statements become useless and ridiculous (worthy of ridicule.) Some on this site don’t stop with telling you that you are being ridiculous and move on directly to providing the actual ridicule. This should not surprise you.

When you state that “there must be a first cause for everything” and you then state that such a premise supports your conclusion that a god exists and that this god does not require a cause, then you are violating the rules of logic and making a ridiculous statement (worthy of ridicule). The participants in this discussion are then fully justified in either ignoring you or providing that ridicule.

The arguments for god always fall into these categories, in the end:

1. I get comfort from my belief, therefore it’s tenets are true
2. Many people have believed this through a long time and have sacrificed much for it, therefore its tenets are true
3. My holy book says it’s true
4. I had a special feeling one time (or several times) that it’s true
5. A special man (authority figure of some sort) told me that it’s true

I hope that you can see how spectacularly unconvincing these arguments are to someone who does not already hold your same belief system. This is the basic reason for all religious conflicts: Who could believe this nonsense if they looked at it the same way they assess their investments or the car they buy? Most of them are simply non sequiturs. The rest hold for anything anybody writes down and declares holy or has a special feeling about. (If your argument can be used to prove many different conflicting outcomes, then it cannot prove your conclusion; it is logically useless.)

Please don't bother with further arguments, as none of you has refuted me sufficiently and I'm bored with you--I'll be signing off.

Retiring from the field and claiming victory. Just like your faith: It’s true if you want it to be true, if it “works for you”, if you find it comforting. Eh?

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | September 3, 2010 5:10 PM

"Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths." - Bertrand Russell

Posted by: josephsmidt | September 3, 2010 8:19 PM

"You have just proven that there are indeed stupid questions."

Isn't it funny that around here if a question is asked that nobody can answer it must be stupid. The reality is if you had an intelligent answer you would through it out.

I alos find it odd that so many mock those who can't answer the oft posed anti-religious question "where does God come from" when they are irate if they are asked to answer where quantum gravity comes from.

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | September 3, 2010 9:28 PM

josephsmidt @ 223;

Isn't it funny that around here if a question is asked that nobody can answer it must be stupid.

At the risk of revisiting ground that has already been covered, I think the point being made is that some questions do not advance a discourse, but rather are intended to obfusticate the issue. Some questions are not born of a desire to understand or used as a rhetorical device to illistrate a point, but are deliberately constructed as an attempted 'gotcha' that fails to grasp or engage with the actual concepts at hand.

I alos find it odd that so many mock those who can't answer the oft posed anti-religious question "where does God come from" when they are irate if they are asked to answer where quantum gravity comes from.

I am no physicist, but I think that your attempted equivilency between theories of quantum gravity and theological concepts of godhead is flawed. We have observed the large scale effects of gravity as a force for some centuries. Quantum gravity is a relatively new theory that is a extrapolation of these observations. The theory has demonstrable predictive capacity, and makes certain falsifiable predictions about the nature of the universe.

Conversely, the concept of a god, that is to say a creator superconsciousness, is usually constructed in such a fashion as to be fundamentally unfalsifiable. Conveniently, the being alleged to be omnipotent, the most powerful force in existence, also possesses the attribute of being wholly undetectable. What is more, this being is supposedly not just undetectable to contemporary science, but undetectable to any conceiveable future technology. The contemporary theistic formulation of godhead has been very carefully constructed to fit into any gap in the current state of scientific knowledge.

Thus, while scientists may not be able to present a 'first cause' for quantum gravity, this is not problematic. Scientists do not assume a first cause for everything. They accept the possibility that some things simply exist as a intrinsic or emergent property of reality, as counterintuitive as that may seem (remembering that intuition can often be a poor guide to the objective understanding of the universe). The theory of quantum gravity is a theory that may provide an explanation for physical phenomena. Should countervailling evidence be forthcoming, then this theory may be revised or abandoned. If the theory is shown to have predictive power, and is extensively evidentially supported, then we can tentatively state that this is the basis on which we will proceed with developing our understanding of reality with no 'first cause' necessary.

God, however, is simply asserted by the faithful. The assertion is not tentaive, but presented as immutable fact in the absence of any evidential base or any predictive capacity by which the value of the god claim may be judged. God, as a supposedly highly (indeed, ultimately) complex conscious mind cannot be readily explained as an emergent property of reality, and saying that god 'predates' what we think of as reality does not help to account for how such a supremely complex consciousness came into being without any intermediary stages.

Ultimately, the 'god hypothesis', for want of a better term, runs into the problem of Occam's Razor. God is not parsimonious. As Hawking says, god is simply not necessary for the universe to exist. Assuming the existence of such an unevidenced superconsciousness is an unsupported and unecessary addition to the theories of how the universe came to be.

If a person states that god needs no first cause, then their claim that the universe needs one falls, since if one highly complex phenomenon is alleged to be able to exist without a first cause, why should another not be able to do so also? If a person states that the universe must have a first cause, then god also must be shown to have one lest the argument falls foul of the logical fallacy of special pleading. At this point, we end up mired in increasingly fruitless hypotheticals of the possible existence of a 'super-god', or the god of god. This then becomes infinitely regressive, since each god required to create the other gods would require a god of its own.

I am aware that I have rambled somewhat in this post, but I hope that I have managed to convey why the question 'where does god come from?' is not equivilent to 'where does quantum gravity come from?', if only because science is actively looking for an answer to the latter (even while accepting that such an answer may never be found), while religion is not only disinterested in an answer to the former, but fears the question itself since it exposes the intellectually indefensible presuppositionalist nature of religious belief.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 3, 2010 9:59 PM

when they are irate if they are asked to answer where quantum gravity comes from.

How you used that indicates you are a moron.
full stop.

To make yourself look slightly less silly, try just using "gravity" next time.

otherwise, you're asking use to answer where the the theory of quantum gravity comes from.

which, of course, you could just google, thusly:

http://physics.about.com/od/quantumphysics/f/quantumgravity.htm

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 3, 2010 10:04 PM

when they are irate if they are asked to answer where quantum gravity comes from.

that would be like asking: "Where does evolution come from?"

Posted by: josephsmidt | September 3, 2010 11:06 PM

A few things:

1. @226: Yes, I must be a sock puppet since I'm not drinking your kool aid. :)

2. @227 Actually, using plain gravity would be wrong since you can't get universes to be created from classical gravity theories as the whole point is *quantum* fluctuations are required, But I'm sure you don't know this since 99% of readers of this blog have never actually published in physics journals and yet call the rest of us stupid. :)

3. @230 & 224; No, quantum gravity must exist (Or something just like it.) and so it makes sense to ask where it comes from. Just like the sun exists and it makes sense to ask where it came from. Given we up doesn't have a smell your question is non-sensical. Don't confuse questions you can't answer with questions that are non-sensical.

I know it is hard to tell the difference between questions that are non-sensical and questions that are fair to ask but are hard to answer. But just try.

4. @225: Thank you for an honest attempt to address these questions. I can tell you are respectable and have the capacity to construct well reasoned arguments.

One problem with your response is you seem to assume I am trying to push the idea of a God forward. I am not. I am just saying that Hawkins has suggested that, as Sean Carroll himself has worded it, the universe comes into existence naturally and you get something from nothing. But you don't get something from nothing, you get something from something: quantum gravity.

What he has done is shifted the mystery of where the universe comes from to a mystery of where quantum gravity comes from. This in my opinion doesn't solve anything as much as just kick the can down the road.

This doesn't imply God exists, just that scientists and science are still at a loss to ultimately explain where it all comes from. Now, you may say it is a dumb questions but history clearly shows those scientists who tackle such questions are lead to amazing insight but declaring victory is giving up looking in what we still don't understand.

I think atheists *should* take the banner of demanding explanations to things and not just say "well, when it comes to the laws of physics we will just assume they are self existant with no explanation."

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 3, 2010 11:13 PM

turtles.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 3, 2010 11:20 PM

@234

Virtual particles?

That was easy

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | September 3, 2010 11:28 PM

This doesn't imply God exists, just that scientists and science are still at a loss to ultimately explain where it all comes from.

Of course the whole question is stupid, it could just as easily be asked "why is there God rather than no God?" where the stock answer can be just as well applied to what we know about reality - something has to exist. Though the question of why makes it an incoherent question, it's assuming there's reason and purpose to it before even establishing that is indeed the case. But to pretend it's a legitimate question is misleading, it's not a question of what's at the bottom of the seemingly-infinite sequence of turtles but one in which to defend the belief in God.

The logic used to defend God this way is really quite absurd: Something cannot come from nothingNothing is the default stateGod can create something from nothingTherefore Jesus died on the cross for your sins Thus the question of why there's something rather than nothing can be answered "Because God loves you!" and we all walk away feeling warm and fuzzy, safe in the knowledge that we've achieved nothing more than defining the universe's existence for one species of millions that live (and trillions that have lived) on one planet that orbits one out of 10²³ stars which has existed for 1/10,000th of the universes history. Yep, we're the answer to existence!

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 3, 2010 11:57 PM

The laws of physics are not a THING, it's descriptive. You ARE asking "where does UP come from"

Posted by: co | September 4, 2010 12:50 AM

josephsmidt:

So, do you also ask "Where does Lorentz invariance come from?" Or "where does isotropy come from?" Or "Where does linear momentum conservation come from?"

If not, why not?

If so, why not ask about parsimony?

Yes, I am a physicist. And, yes, I think you're being an idiot with your questions.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | September 4, 2010 3:36 AM

My purpose is to state I don't think it is a dumb question to wonder where the laws of physics com from *give* there isn't a single thing else in the universe whose existence is real and doesn't have an explanation behind it.

But let's pretend it's the laws of physics. The universe behaves in particular waysThese laws of physics permit our existenceIt is not known how these principles come aboutGod can explain itTherefore, Jesus died on the cross for our sinsIt's still positing God as a substitute for human ignorance. We don't know how something came about, therefore it must have been God.

Posted by: Numad | September 4, 2010 5:24 AM

I'd go so far as to say that the phrase "the intelligibility of the physical laws" contradicts itself.

It seems to me that if the universe was really all that comprehensible to our intellectual faculties, we'd have a better term for "laws of physics" for cosmic properties than a crude analogy that allows this sort of word game.

Posted by: ConcernedJoe | September 4, 2010 6:15 AM

uncle frogy #169 - though my incoherent sentences may suggest my pleasure with the weed akin to the venerable Lord Buckley's I assure you I was drug-free and trying my best at the "late hour for me" to be serious.

No, NOT scientifically correct and precise - but nonetheless serious.

My point - perhaps not well taken - was that I do not think it hard at all (if one reads in seriousness real scientific discussions and has scientific openness) to accept as a hypothesis that there never was nor never will be nothingness.

That nothingness is just an illusion of nothingness in the cosmic context.

That there has been, is, and will be a continuum of birth-death-birth infinitely back in colloquial said "time" and likewise forward ad infinitum.

And that certainly no gods (as colloquially said) are necessary nor found in this process, and no reason, purpose, or laws divined and dictated by such.

And that if you need a ruler and master of all things that the "brain in the bottle" theory makes more sense than some jealous god of ancient goat herders.

Sandi's of the world were being addressed.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 4, 2010 10:27 AM

@246

This highlights why it's a "stupid" question. Because physics is not a table or atom per say. It's a descriptive observation based on physical things. Asking "where do our descriptions of the nature of the universe ultimately come from" in the context of something like the start of the universe is sort of nonsensical. The laws of phsyics come from observing the properties of the universe. Asking where those properties came from is nonsensical. Where do the properties of height, width, of an object come from? They are descriptors not a platonic quality bestowed upon it. We recognize a set of matter as a chair and from the point where we recognize the universe starting to be a chair to the point where it no longer is, is height/width. It's a definition we place on things to talk about it and understand it. Asking what was the cosmic origin of it is like asking "Can you steal red?"

Posted by: lhikanliveson | September 4, 2010 6:39 PM

Reading the debate now.

I can't help but picture the other people in the discussions as like these irritating little goblins with wooden spears and Dawkins wading into the melee as this huge hulking plate-armored badass dual-wielding hand axes or something awesome like that.

Posted by: co | September 4, 2010 7:11 PM

considering his title, it might be more fitting to imagine a British man in a suit waltzing into an army of alien death tank cyborgs and thinking them into submission.

à la Marvin in http://www.otostopcu.org/yazi/h2g2/b2c8.php