Astonishing Things Materialists Say

_{Barry Arrington

April 10, 2017

Intelligent Design}

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Sev muses:

The problem for creationists is that positing an intelligence that is able to create life out of inanimate materials is to claim that life can be created out of non-living materials. The question then becomes, if it’s possible at the hands of a creator then why not through natural causation?

Hmmm. The space station exists. Just why couldn’t it have been built by blind purposeless natural causes? I suppose the analogy is not really fair, because the nano-technology displayed in even the most simple life makes the space station look like a tinker toy.

Comments

Is it fair and just, is it right, that we should pick on these poor benighted souls? Let us pray for them. Let us be merciful, as God has been merciful to us. Time + Chance + Poof = Life. Who can doubt it?Mung_{April 11, 2017
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LocalMinimum @8
LocalMinimum: I think like a programmer/simulation designer, and I imagine life as the set of configurations from which certain functionalities arise, and I generally approach life as we know it as being modulated wholly within matter. … I also claim agnosticism with respect to the hard problem of consciousness, though I do recognize many issues of conceptual “weirdness” you run into when you try to attribute experience to matter alone.
It is utterly impossible for matter to be a free rational responsible person — I can provide arguments for this position. Secondly, with regard to organisms in general, I see neither a physical nor a (physically embedded) informational explanation for the self-organization of life. Here is a quote to illustrate my point:
Stephen L. Talbott: I spoke a moment ago of molecular and cellular movements that seemed to be both meaningfully directed and unprogrammed. Here is a more concrete example. It deals with the fiendishly complex and coordinated response to a kind of challenge — a wound — that is always unique in its countless details. That is, the organism is facing something that neither it nor its ancestors have ever faced before in just this way. The description is offered by English biologist, Brian Ford: Surgery is war. It is impossible to envisage the sheer complexity of what happens within a surgical wound. It is a microscopical scene of devastation. Muscle cells have been crudely crushed, nerves ripped asunder; the scalpel blade has slashed and separated close communities of tissues, rupturing long-established networks of blood vessels. After the operation, broken and cut tissues are crushed together by the surgeon’s crude clamps. There is no circulation of blood or lymph across the suture. Yet within seconds of the assault, the single cells are stirred into action. They use unimaginable senses to detect what has happened and start to respond. Stem cells specialize to become the spiky-looking cells of the stratum spinosum; the shattered capillaries are meticulously repaired, new cells form layers of smooth muscle in the blood-vessel walls and neat endothelium; nerve fibres extend towards the site of the suture to restore the tactile senses . . . These phenomena require individual cells to work out what they need to do. And the ingenious restoration of the blood-vessel network reveals that there is an over-arching sense of the structure of the whole area in which this remarkable repair takes place. So too does the restoration of the skin. Cells that carry out the repair are subtly coordinated so that the skin surface, the contour of which they cannot surely detect, is restored in a form that is close to perfect. (Ford 2009) It is not being radical to point out that we can’t even begin to picture the unfathomable movement of trillions of molecules and millions of cells in the damaged area. The story is directed toward a desirable conclusion that you and I know very well — restoration to normalcy of a damaged body part — but how does the story “hold together” at the level of molecules and cells, which certainly do not “know” what we know? And yet, quite obviously, in some objective sense the necessary knowledge is there in the organism. It knows. It gets the job done.

LocalMinimum: I tend to want to refactor any understanding to terms of the observable, when possible. I know better than to demand it, however.
I take it that by ‘observable’ you mean ‘measurable’?Origenes_{April 11, 2017
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Sev, the open systems can do anything argument is a gross failure. KF PS: Two recent threads: https://uncommondescent.com/informatics/ud-guest-post-dr-eugen-s-on-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics-plus-vs-evolution/ https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/of-s-t-r-i-ng-s-nanobots-informational-statistical-thermodynamics-and-evolution/kairosfocus_{April 11, 2017
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Excellent point, Eugene @ 3. "if it’s possible at the hands of a creator then why not through natural causation?" Why not: "if it's possible through natural causation then why not at the hands of a creator?" But of course logic doesn't apply to materialists.Florabama_{April 11, 2017
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Really, dispatching with the arguments of materialists/atheists is like shooting fish in a barrel. it's just too easy. Origenes (5) nails it. The former are always trying to sneak in "personhood, freedom, intelligence and purpose." Sorry, matter qua matter has none of these. Unless, of course, we're just lucky dirt, then somehow matter does!mdvirgilio_{April 11, 2017
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"Sev is saying, all the parts are there, thermodynamics is not afronted, and we know enough time has elapsed" No, Sev is speaking out of VAST ignorance on behalf of "creationists". From the "God Delusion" until now materialists have shown a sweeping intellectual dishonesty in not feeling they need to study and understand what they argue against before they argue against it. No Creationist believes God created out of "inanimate" materials but out of his own word and command which every Creationist believes is very animated and alive and a part of himself God infused into life. Whats next? Will Sev claim that because ventriloquists can pour something of themselves into their puppets bringing inanimate objects to "life" - at his or her hands - it leaves the door open to puppets doing so without them? He can certainly argue abiogenesis but claiming Creationists have a problem from their own stance is just idiocy based on not even having a rudimentary understanding of what "Creationists" hold to.mikeenders_{April 11, 2017
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Since I brought up the matter of God's being pure spirit, I'm appending below the fascinatingly erudite Catechesis on the Holy Angels delivered by John-Paul II, which Christians, in particular, among us, may like. Some of you have perhaps read it, and I might even have posted it here before. http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2angel.htmAxel_{April 11, 2017
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Where on earth did you get the idea that Christians believe that God causes life to emerge from matter ? We believe/know that He inspires it with life, breathes life into it. Life is non-local in its origin, its nature partaking of the divine (since God is pure Spirit) is ultimately, imponderable and utterly, utterly mysterious.Axel_{April 11, 2017
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BA @ 6: Well said. Your original point was very easy to understand...and spot on.Truth Will Set You Free_{April 11, 2017
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Origenes @ 5: I think like a programmer/simulation designer, and I imagine life as the set of configurations from which certain functionalities arise, and I generally approach life as we know it as being modulated wholly within matter. I tend to want to refactor any understanding to terms of the observable, when possible. I know better than to demand it, however. I also claim agnosticism with respect to the hard problem of consciousness, though I do recognize many issues of conceptual "weirdness" you run into when you try to attribute experience to matter alone.LocalMinimum_{April 11, 2017
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The other possibility is that life is not reducible to inanimate matter, a view known as vitalism. If living things are teleological, then their very operation cannot be explained by chance and necessity.EricMH_{April 11, 2017
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rvb8 @ 2, You don’t seem to understand what Sev or I said. I will try to help you. Here is the key sentence I was pointing out. “if it’s possible at the hands of a creator then why not through natural causation?” This question is astonishing, because the answer is so glaringly obvious, as even a moment’s reflection will reveal. Substitute “it’s” with any moderately complex created thing and you will see. if the space station is possible at the hands of a creator then why not through natural causation if a computer is possible at the hands of a creator then why not through natural causation if the comment rvb8 wrote is possible at the hands of a creator then why not through natural causation if the sonnets of Shakespeare are possible at the hands of a creator then why not through natural causation The answer to Sev’s question is obvious: "Because many things an intelligent agent can do are beyond the ability of blind unguided purposeless natural forces." Now, we can argue about whether simple life is one of those things. But that there are some things that an intelligent agent can do that blind unguided purposeless natural forces cannot is beyond reasonable dispute. Barry Arrington_{April 11, 2017
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The problem for creationists is that positing an intelligence that is able to create life out of inanimate materials is to claim that life can be created out of non-living materials.
Are there creationists who posit matter as life's sole ingredient?
The question then becomes, if it’s possible at the hands of a creator then why not through natural causation?
Because natural causation lacks personhood, freedom, intelligence and purpose. A copy of 'Summa Theologica' by Thomas Aquinas consists solely of matter, yet the book can not be brought into existence by blind particles bumping into each other.Origenes_{April 11, 2017
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rvb8: All the parts are there? Well, the same parts are there for practically anything material you can conceive of, including the space station. Atoms are all about this planet. You could even say it's made of them. Thermodynamics is not affronted? But is it cooperative? Does it offer a career path for aspiring bits of mud? Or would it simply leave them to suffer their inertness until they're swallowed by their neighboring star? We know enough time has elapsed? What is enough time, and how do we know that it is? We now prefer evidence, experimentation, and the unobvious? So, you offer that your position is unobvious; but can you offer evidence and experimentation to prefer it? Specifics, please.LocalMinimum_{April 10, 2017
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The exact same argument is supposed to be the problem for hard core materialists, yet it is never voiced this way. Let us assume that Universe started as a quantum event, and that life later emerged as a perfectly materialistic and mechanical process. It then follows that if we keep advancing science long enough, then one day we will be able to explain and reproduce at will both how the Universe can be started and how life be created from raw materials. Now, what in the world makes us so confident that somehow we’re going to be the first in this chain of intelligence capable of starting universes and creating life? It is a lot more likely that we’re not the first to figure this out.Eugene_{April 10, 2017
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Is this a serious post, or an O'Leary poorly thought out after thought? Sev is saying, all the parts are there, thermodynamics is not afronted, and we know enough time has elapsed. Barry says the spacestation, and Mt Rushmore are designed therefore.... This argument was used and thrown out at Dover. The length and depth of this piece suggests we ignore current experimentation, and once again resort to intuition, common sense, the gut, and this obvious explanation will become obvious to all. Unfortunately it was obvious the world was flat, it was obvious earthquakes were the gods fighting, lightning was obviously the province of god, and diseases obviously manifestations of god's displeasure. Thank god (heh:), the obvious has been consigned to the rubbish bin of understanding, and we now prefer evidence, experimentation, and the unobvious, to the vacuous, empty, 'obvious'.rvb8_{April 10, 2017
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Yup -- breathing spirit-fire into the dirt turned clay.kairosfocus_{April 10, 2017
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