Armand Jacks Destroys ID in One Sentence

_{Barry Arrington

April 16, 2017

Intelligent Design}

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Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.

Get ready.

Hold on to your hat.

Here it is:

Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.

Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ? If you say “no” your argument is refuted. If you say “yes” you look like a fool or a liar or both. Talk about the Scylla and Charybdis.

AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you write something like that down. I know, I know. Thinking is hard, and 10 seconds is a long time. But still.

As for the title of this post, on reflection maybe I overstated AJ’s accomplishment a little.

Comments

The greatest intellects of history have struggled with the question of free will. Christians have the problem Boswell points out and Johnson is unable to refute. The materialist has the problems that we have pointed out many times in these pages: (1) it is absurd to say that a material object possesses a property called "freedom," and (2) the idea that all effects are caused by particles moving in accordance with the laws of nature is irreconcilable with the idea that an amalgamation of those particles has freedom. But free will exists. As Johnson notes, all experience confirms it.Barry Arrington_{April 17, 2017
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Boswell: "The argument for the moral necessity of human actions is always, I observe, fortified by supposing universal prescience to be one of the attributes of the Deity." Johnson: "You are surer that you are free, than you are of prescience; you are surer that you can lift up your finger or not as you please, than you are of any conclusion from a deduction of reasoning. But let us consider a little the objection from prescience. It is certain I am either to go home tonight or not; that does not prevent my freedom." Boswell: "That it is certain you are either to go home or not, does not prevent your freedom; because the liberty of choice between the two is compatible with that certainty. But if one of these events be certain now, you have no future power of volition. If it be certain you are to go home to-night, you must go home." Johnson: "If I am well acquainted with a man, I can judge with great probability how he will act in any case, without his being restrained by my judging. God may have this probability increased to certainty." Boswell: When it is increased to certainty, freedom ceases, because that cannot be certainly foreknown, which is not certain at the time; but if it be certain at the time, it is a contradiction in terms to maintain that there can be afterwards any contingency dependent on the exercise of will or anything else." Johnson: "All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it."Barry Arrington_{April 17, 2017
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The accusation against any atheist/materialist/physicalist when discussing ID, religion, morality, etc. Is that we are hyperskeptical. The incompatability of an omniscient god and free will is no different. We are being asked to believe that our free will can affect the outcome of something that is already known to happen. If there is something that warrants skepticism, this is it. All of this nonsense about god being out of time etc. is nothing more than an attempt to dance around the irrefutable logic.Armand Jacks_{April 17, 2017
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WJM, as Chesterton told us in the Ethics of Elfland, the leaf dropped to the ground because it is bewitched: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/gravity-in-elfland/Barry Arrington_{April 17, 2017
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Armand said:
Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.
Let's look at a leaf that falls from a tree; Armand claims that what we are observing is a material cause acting on the leaf that makes it fall to the earth. First, I'm certainly not "seeing" gravity do anything. I'm seeing an effect of a cause we erroneously refer to as "gravity". Second, asserting that gravity is what is causing the leaf to fall is a categorical error; gravity is a description of a pattern of behavior. Gravity is a description of the behavior of the leaf, it is not the cause of the leaf falling. Third, what "causes" the pattern of behaviors we call "the effects of gravity" is utterly unknown; we know it usually occurs in conjunction with mass, but to say mass "causes" gravity begs the question of how mass causes gravity. A current theory claims that mass causes a distortion in space, but again, how does mass do that? As I pointed out in another thread,
We call these observable, reliable and measurable effects physical laws, forces and universal constants, but those terms are misleading, much like referring to “chance” as a causal agency. Those terms do not represent causal objects or energies we can point at, but are rather descriptions (or models) of observed patterns of behavior of matter and energy for which there is no known or observable cause. The names of these patterns and models are used as if they apply to causal things, but this is a conceptual error. When we say “gravity causes X to fall”, it is not gravity causing it because gravity is the description of the physics of the event. Something “causes it to fall”, but it is not gravity; it is whatever causes the pattern of behavior we call “gravity”. What is the “natural world”? The natural world is the set of phenomena that can be described and predicted according to behavioral and interactive constants. However, those laws and constants do not describe where or how such laws and constants exist in the first place, or what they are, or even how they are affecting physical phenomena. These invisible and mysterious causes are supernatural both by definition and logically because they: (1) necessarily relate to an order of existence beyond the observable natural world (since they cause the behavior that defines what we call “the natural world”, (2) are unable to be explained by science or the laws of nature (since science depends upon observing behavioral patterns, and behavioral patterns cannot explain what causes such patterns in the first place), and (3) these patterns are attributed to invisible, unknown agents (which we erroneously refer to with objectifying terminology – forces, constants and laws). The science of the natural world depends upon an unknown, unseen superset of mysterious agencies causing the predictable, reliable, rationally understandable patterns of behavior we observe and describe as the set of natural-occurring phenomena.
Armand Jacks is confusing a description of effects with the cause of those effects. Yes, when we experience these effects we do so in a framework we have come to call the physical or "material" world, which behaves in a law-like, predictable manner. In fact, we often use this very quality of law-like, predictable behavior as the definitive quality of what we refer to as the physical or material world. In other words, we refer to our experience of these patterns of behavior as an experience of the physical or material world. The problem for Armand, however, is that none of us experience the causes of the behaviors we are observing (setting aside our experience of our own will); we only observe effects. So Armand is entirely incorrect; we have never seen a cause; all we can observe are the effects of underlying causes that we have never seen and can only infer and measure via the pattern of effects. In fact, what we call the "natural" or "material" world is nothing but the experience of patterns of effects generated by causes that we do not directly experience at all (again, setting our will aside for the time being, which is the only cause we actually experience).William J Murray_{April 17, 2017
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F/N: Let us now refocus the OP:
Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity. Get ready. Hold on to your hat. Here it is:
Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.
Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ? If you say “no” your argument is refuted. If you say “yes” you look like a fool or a liar or both. Talk about the Scylla and Charybdis. AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you write something like that down. I know, I know. Thinking is hard, and 10 seconds is a long time. But still. As for the title of this post, on reflection maybe I overstated AJ’s accomplishment a little.
Again, we have seen a tangent, but one that has in it A worldview level misconception that needs some response so that we can refocus the issue. Here, an objector has asserted that the only acting causes are material ones. That is, he sees the cosmos in physicalist terms as blind forces of chance and mechanical necessity acting on matter and energy in space-time, such that temporality and change emerge from chance and necessity, with agency squeezed out. (We can take it that he is not implying that only the materials that things are made of act, he is implying that agency and purpose are delusional; so that directly acting actuating causes trigger change by acting on the only components of reality he will accept in chains that must in the end come out of nothing or else must span the infinite traverse of time past in steps, as already described. [Both those options imply absurdities.] He does not see the grand delusion involved in implying that his fact no 1, self-conscious, reflexive, enconscienced awareness is an illusion.) We are back to the problem of computational substrates and how they act. If mind be reduced to such one way or another, whether an analogue or digital or neural network wetware machine, the inherent problem is that such are simply not rational, responsible entities. They are blind, cause-effect machines driven by GIGO-limited hard and soft ware. Which itself raises the further question as to how the required FSCO/I to effect such a machine comes from. In the case of he human brain and CNS as computing substrate, there is a serious issue of the sheer lack of materials to store the info content to account for hard and soft ware in the zygote. And, we need to understand that patching up an analogue computer or loading coded algorithms and data structure into a digital one, or wiring up a neural network are all forms of programming that express an inescapably information-rich, GIGO-limited content unto the hardware substrate. if your ball and disk naval gunlaying analogue computer is not set up to solve the right differential equations in the right way, it will fail; something that took decades to get right. If your Pentium has some flawed instructions, it will blindly execute its microcode without caring one way or another, it is a rock that has no dreams it is just executing organised cause-effect chains, hence the famous recall. And, a neural network, too is no magic, you do not get to a functioning computational substrate for free out of lucky noise filtered by incremental differential success. That should have been quite evident by the times of the kelvin tide prediction tables, not too many years after Darwin's two books came out. And as I pointed out in my remarks in the other thread, Darwin himself ran straight into the problems as can be seen from his letter to Graham:
. . . you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? . . . . Lastly I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilisation than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.
That should give us serious pause. Instead of going to grand delusion, we should be willing to acknowledge the force of empirical fact no 1, we are self-aware, reflexive, self-moved agents with causal capability in the mechanical, embodied world, such as we express when we type and post a comment in this thread. Then, we need to ask, what sort of world must we be living in, to make such possible. And I assure you, it will not be a world of blind chance and necessity only acting on matter and energy in spacetime. Agency with responsible, rational freedom must be recognised for itself, as step no 1. And, our understanding of empirical observation must be broad enough to recognise WHO is observing, observations do not make themselves happen out of nothing and illusions. Where, again, the denial of self-moved, responsibly and rationally free agency instantly leads to grand delusion and collapses into absurdity. The ideologically rooted, institutionalised, entrenched denial of agency is at the heart of the problems we see. And Darwin himself should have seen that long since. Unfortunately, he resorted to logic with a swivel, selectively hyperskeptical rhetoric, which failed to ask, but what does the jumped up monkey mind picture I just painted mean for my own system of thought? We need to ask that question, and we need to note the implications that worked out across C20, as Darwin here foresaw, even a full decade after he published Descent of Man, with the remarks in Chs 5 - 7 esp at the beginning of Ch 6. No wonder H G Wells (a student of Huxley, Darwin's Bulldog as he was called) warned us in no uncertain terms in several novels, especially the very opening words of War of the Worlds:
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water . . . No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us . . . . looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas. And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
The horrors of the past 100 years did not come out of nothing, for no reason. KFkairosfocus_{April 17, 2017
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PS: Plato's Athenian Stranger et al on the self-moved, in The Laws Bk X:
Ath. . . . when one thing changes another, and that another, of such will there be any primary changing element? How can a thing which is moved by another ever be the beginning of change? Impossible. But when the self-moved changes other, and that again other, and thus thousands upon tens of thousands of bodies are set in motion, must not the beginning of all this motion be the change of the self-moving principle? . . . . self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet moves other is second. [[ . . . .] Ath. If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery, or fiery substance, simple or compound-how should we describe it? Cle. You mean to ask whether we should call such a self-moving power life? Ath. I do. Cle. Certainly we should. Ath. And when we see soul in anything, must we not do the same-must we not admit that this is life? [[ . . . . ] Cle. You mean to say that the essence which is defined as the self-moved is the same with that which has the name soul? Ath. Yes; and if this is true, do we still maintain that there is anything wanting in the proof that the soul is the first origin and moving power of all that is, or has become, or will be, and their contraries, when she has been clearly shown to be the source of change and motion in all things? Cle. Certainly not; the soul as being the source of motion, has been most satisfactorily shown to be the oldest of all things. Ath. And is not that motion which is produced in another, by reason of another, but never has any self-moving power at all, being in truth the change of an inanimate body, to be reckoned second, or by any lower number which you may prefer? Cle. Exactly. Ath. Then we are right, and speak the most perfect and absolute truth, when we say that the soul is prior to the body, and that the body is second and comes afterwards, and is born to obey the soul, which is the ruler? [[ . . . . ] Ath. If, my friend, we say that the whole path and movement of heaven, and of all that is therein, is by nature akin to the movement and revolution and calculation of mind, and proceeds by kindred laws, then, as is plain, we must say that the best soul takes care of the world and guides it along the good path. [[Plato here explicitly sets up an inference to design (by a good soul) from the intelligible order of the cosmos.]
--> Again, food for thought.kairosfocus_{April 17, 2017
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GUN, again a misperception. I suspect a part of the problem is that we often have a challenge understanding temporality and agency. The last is prior in importance, so again I ask, are we capable of genuine love, which requires actual choice? If not, we are not even capable of genuine conversation, reasoning and responsibility; which instantly lets grand delusion loose and ends in absurdity. So, the question to you is, are we capable of love: ___________, and if not, how then do you come here to try to have a reasoned discussion: ______ ? For the former, the future emerges causally connected stage by stage as we act so that action here and now is an integral part of how it is made. The simple analogy of watching a video a second time after the fact not changing the reality of choices made by participants seen in the video then shows that knowledge of what will happen does not inherently force what happens. God would be in a position to see the video so to speak outside of our temporally constrained domain. I think you may imagine that as the future emerges through cause-effect bonds and chains, only an act in the present that utterly controls it to the point that agency is a delusion could lead to foreknowledge. That is an error of conception, and one that undermines even the possibility of a genuine reasoned conversation, it is that bad. And BTW, hypercalvinism is just as much in error as any other species of determinism on controlling causes, which of course includes the errors of evolutionary materialistic scientism. All such schemes lead to setting grand delusion loose. By contrast, I suggest that you ponder the self-moved, reflexively acting agent . . . the living soul . . . as a genuinely free first cause capable of responsible and rational decision and interaction with the external world that then leads to its mechanical and stochastic behaviour in response to the agent's action, and also to interaction with other agents. KFkairosfocus_{April 17, 2017
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RVB God knows that in the future you'll be an atheist, you can trick Him and after one year become theist.Eugen_{April 16, 2017
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We continue to see the effect whereby hostile indoctrination undermines ability to see and acknowledge a fundamentally simple point. Which goes to an unfortunately familiar pattern, selective hyperskepticism. I guess I should note that God uses omnipresence and omnipotence to enable and sustain the existence of reality, including morally governed beings capable of love, which requires true freedom of choice (and thus also, the possibility of ill-advised choices). So, are we or are we not capable of genuine love? If yes, we are free. If no, this is absurd. KFkairosfocus_{April 16, 2017
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kf,
Suppose I have a tape of an event such as a debate. Does my knowing the outcome through having viewed the tape undermine the freedom of action of its participants when they acted? Obviously, not — and now just imagine someone beyond time who can see the tape even while we are located temporally prior to the events.
It sounds like you agree that God having foreknowledge does indeed mean that the future is determined (just as what happens on a pre-recorded tape is determined). I take it then that you're a compatibilist. That's fine, although that probably makes you a minority on this site. (see here for instance: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/compatible-not-really/)goodusername_{April 16, 2017
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LocalM, nonsense, if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, then all events are known, their outcomes for ordained, and my life, your life, and everybodied life is a pointless side show. You either accept Calvin's 'elect', or you don't. I don't BTW, just more religious hokem Free will in Christianity, with such a God, is an oxymoron.rvb8_{April 16, 2017
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It seems that there is indoctrination on the point. Maybe another simple case will help. Suppose I have a tape of an event such as a debate. Does my knowing the outcome through having viewed the tape undermine the freedom of action of its participants when they acted? Obviously, not -- and now just imagine someone beyond time who can see the tape even while we are located temporally prior to the events. I suggest, that makes no difference to the issue of real choice and responsible agency for those going through the spatial-temporal-volitional process that creates that future. Earlier, I used a very relevant case of macroeconomic prediction and policy making. Again, credible knowledge of the future state did not undermine freedom of either the participants in decision-making or the public who on receiving the injection through ill-advised policy triggered the macroeconomic crisis that was predicted. In short, objectors are confusing knowledge and causation. Someone above has rightly highlighted that freedom of choice and the action of choice are part of the causal framework that makes the future state come to be. But just as believers in macroeconomic folly refused to heed sound counsel tot he contrary, I can predict that objectors here will not heed correction due to their commitment to a scheme of thought that is hostile to the idea of God. However, there will be onlookers who will see that something is very wrong with the oh if God knows the future we have no freedom argument. KFkairosfocus_{April 16, 2017
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Sev, cross-temporal knowledge of the future does not CAUSALLY restrict that future.
If the future can be known, with certainty, then it is already determined, with certainy. If the future isn't determined, then God can't know the future, as there's nothing to know (since it hasn't been determined).goodusername_{April 16, 2017
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AJ:
If I know that the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win the next game, the free will of the players on both teams mean absolutely nothing.
Except, the free will of the Toronto Maple Leafs would be a factor from which the event emerged, thus potentially crucial to it. Your knowledge in no way affects this unless you apply it to alter the result. With sufficient knowledge and means, you could choose to render their free will meaningless. Your knowledge of factors alone in no way constrains them, unless you're willing to dive into some observer-centric interpretation of reality; at which point you'll have quite a hole to dig yourself out of, materialism-wise.LocalMinimum_{April 16, 2017
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KF:
Sev, cross-temporal knowledge of the future does not CAUSALLY restrict that future.
Of course it does. If I know that the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win the next game, the free will of the players on both teams mean absolutely nothing. If god knows that the Maple Leafs will win the next game, the same applies. Free will is dead.
At very simple and crude analogical level, sometimes macro-economic models do accurately predict; as a certain analyst once did by way of warning in a certain country.
So, god is no more omniscient than a good Wall Street trader? I'm pretty sure that is not what most Christians believe. Although, it would explain much of recorded history.
I trust this allows you to begin to see that Divine foreknowledge — contrary to certain common talking points — does not undermine freedom of the individual, or the responsibility of the individual and particularly decision-makers to seek the truth and act prudently towards the right and the long-term good.
Yes. This makes it very clear. We all have free will in our day to day decisions, but these choices make absolutely no difference to the final outcome. In that respect, free will appears to be more of a cruel joke than a gift.
Unfortunately, marches of folly are all too common and such reliably head over the cliff, as our civilisation currently seems hell-bent on. KF
. And, if god is omniscient, our free will can do nothing to avert this lemming like march over the cliff. Btw, I am sure you are aware that lemmings don't actually jump over the cliff. You might want to rethink your much used graphic.Armand Jacks_{April 16, 2017
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Sev, cross-temporal knowledge of the future does not CAUSALLY restrict that future. So, Divine foreknowledge or even intervention through prophecy and actions that move the world on the whole to a divine end, do not inherently undermine responsible, rational freedom. At very simple and crude analogical level, sometimes macro-economic models do accurately predict; as a certain analyst once did by way of warning in a certain country. The credible knowledge base for that prediction involving input-output tables, statistical studies and Fourier analysis etc did not change the freedom and responsibility of decision makers to act, though it did inform them from a source that they should have known was sound. Unfortunately, a decision was still taken to go ahead, leading to the prediction being sadly borne out by events. And, the decisions and analyses did not rob people of freedom to act in various ways, though of course there are tendencies and constraints we all face. I trust this allows you to begin to see that Divine foreknowledge -- contrary to certain common talking points -- does not undermine freedom of the individual, or the responsibility of the individual and particularly decision-makers to seek the truth and act prudently towards the right and the long-term good. Unfortunately, marches of folly are all too common and such reliably head over the cliff, as our civilisation currently seems hell-bent on. KFkairosfocus_{April 16, 2017
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Physical dynamics do not determine the measurement function. -- John Von Neumann, HH PatteeUpright BiPed_{April 16, 2017
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Field effects, such as gravity, don't work through contact. That's why gravity was such a controversial idea among the materialists when the law of gravity was discovered by Newton. In fact, nothing in the universe works through contact due to field effects. Nothing ever touches, it is all attraction and repulsion at the atomic level. Old-school Democritus style materialism, "it is all just atoms colliding" is now completely refuted, so the materialist goalposts have been moved and the fact materialism has been refuted is hidden. Similar to how Darwinists moves the goalposts whenever a prediction of Darwinism is refuted, such as lack of transitional fossils, extremely rapid speciation in the Cambrian explosion, epigenetics, and so on. The only reason materialism is respected nowadays is that people have very short memories, perhaps purposefully. I predict this is what will happen with Intelligent Design. Materialists will just lump ID into a catch all "materialism" and continue to claim there is no evidence against materialism.EricMH_{April 16, 2017
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And yet another post, that's not a post. How exactly, does this serve the ID community, as stated in the mast head? AJ, states a simple fact; 'for causation we need interaction of materials.' Barry says, 'no, God did it.' The two lines in the sand are dilineated. However, before we can have a reaction, two things do indeed need to come into contact, or do indeed need to react to one another. Harry Potter's wand won't help Barry. AJ, and his damned materiaistic, contact is necessary, argument appears to be correct. Your wand desire Barry, and fairy wishfulness, and Godish creationist hope, desire, mentality, does not!rvb8_{April 16, 2017
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KF:
Does he understand the four classic causes?
I am using the same definition of cause that you use when you make your 500-1000 bit claim. If this type of argument is valid to make an ID inference, why isn't it valid when making a materialism inference? Especially when there are trillions and trillions of examples.Armand Jacks_{April 16, 2017
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kairosfocus @ 1
Does he understand the four classic causes? Or, does he mean, that the world is a materialistic entity from hydrogen to humans so causes must fit in an evolutionary materialistic view, which of course ends in self refutation, incoherently undermining the responsibly, rationally free mind. KF
Do you all understand that in the case of a God with demonstrable foreknowledge of the future there can be no responsibility or free will? If God knows something is going to happen then it will happen and there is nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it. We are all just good little Godbots trundling along our predetermined course through life to whatever future has been mapped out for us.Seversky_{April 16, 2017
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Which classical school of thought is characterized by a myopia to rational connections beyond the first order and a compulsion to dive headfirst into blind tangents?LocalMinimum_{April 16, 2017
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C S Lewis makes the point rather more eruditely in the next thread header : The cardinal difficulty of naturalism – still a difficultyAxel_{April 16, 2017
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If I may interject, AJ and Barry : your idea, AJ, of 'things whose cause is unknown beyond a reasonable doubt' would be laughably at variance with ours. Miracles abound. And their cause known beyond the doubt of anyone not deliberately catatonic. Our faith and knowledge form a continuum, and the former is confirmed by a innumerable miracles. You on the other hand, have no difficulty in denying the unavoidable concluson that the DNA code inscriptions are the product of an immaterial intelligence. But alas, you and your kindred spirits seem to fit into that category, so I guarantee that if Barry provides examples, you will not accept them as the product of non-material causes. Why would God's thoughts be any more subtle and less materially engendered than yours. C S Lewis makes the point rather more eruditely in the next thread header : The cardinal difficulty of naturalism – still a difficultyAxel_{April 16, 2017
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Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity.
Barry one, strawman zero. I must have forgotten where I said that my comment was in any way a refutation of ID. Because I clearly didn't. And it clearly isn't. I was simply stating that my claim for materialism uses the same argument as that used for ID.
Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ?
Barry two, strawman zero. Read my quote. I have bolded the operative words for you below:
Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes.
Even if I concede that my typing doesn't have a material cause, which I don't, that would just mean that it has an unknown cause.
AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you right something like that down.
if you are so sure of the stupidity of my statement, maybe you could grace us all with a couple examples of things in the universe whose cause is known beyond a reasonable doubt, and whose identified cause is not physical/material.Armand Jacks_{April 16, 2017
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Does he understand the four classic causes? Or, does he mean, that the world is a materialistic entity from hydrogen to humans so causes must fit in an evolutionary materialistic view, which of course ends in self refutation, incoherently undermining the responsibly, rationally free mind. KFkairosfocus_{April 16, 2017
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