Disappointed with Shermer

_{Mark

April 6, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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From EXPELLED Dr Caroline Crocker.

“Recently I attended a lecture by Michael Shermer at the UCSD Biological Science Symposium (4/2/09). His title was, “Why Darwin Matters,” but his topic was mostly religion. He started by defining science as “looking for natural explanations for natural phenomena” and said that his purpose was to “debunk the junk and expose sloppy thinking.”

We were all subjected to an evening of slapstick comedy, cheap laughs, and the demolition of straw men.

His characterization of ID was that the theory says, 1) If something looks designed, 2) We can’t think how it was designed naturally, 3) Therefore we assert that it was designed supernaturally. (God of the gaps.) Okay everyone, laugh away at the stupid ID theorists.

I was astonished at how a convinced Darwinist, who complains about mixing science and religion, spent most of his time at the Biological Science Symposium talking about religion.”

Get the full text here.

Comments

StephenB, You didn't go off the wagon with me. I'm fine with your tone. On the other hand, I may have gone off the wagon with you. If so, my apologies. --DavidDavid Kellogg_{April 10, 2009
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You write, "The definition of a hyperskeptic is one who believes that there is no correspondence between the rational mind and the rational universe." Then I am not a hyperskeptic. I have different opinions than you do about why the universe is rational and why our mind can build correspondences with it, but I certainly think we can know lots of things about the universe we live in. But, to summarize, and to perhaps wrap this discussion up, I don't believe that we can know as much as you believe we can know, and with such certainty. As with vjtorley, you make jumps that I consider unwarranted in your thinking. We may just to have to, once again, leave things at that point.hazel_{April 10, 2009
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-----“Hazel: “For instance, one of my main points is that not all truths can be known. What ever the “true” nature is of of whatever metaphysical world our universe is a part of (if indeed that is so), can not be known. Asserting that “all truth can be known” is a fundamental principle of reason is false.” Sorry, but that is a little strawmanish. No one ever said that that all truths can be known. -----“Also you say that “Metaphysical truths are consistent with scientific truths [unity of truth].” This assumes that we can even know the truth about the metaphysical world, and I don’t think that is true. Again, I don’t think this statement of yours is anywhere like the few laws of logic that you include in your list.” Again, with respect, (how am I doing with my sensitivity [I just went off the wagon with David], if science can present us with one truth while philosophy presents us with a contradictory truth, the universe is not a rational place. I am amazed at how few people understand this. Please hear me once again. I did not present “laws of logic.” I presented the rational foundations that make logic possible. Logic’s laws are based on those foundations. ------“And you write, as you often have, “We have rational minds, we live in a rational universe, and there is a correspondence between the two.” ------“This also is not a “law of right reason,” but rather a testable conclusion that has been born out by experience. And of course, I’m not sure whether “rational” is the correct word to apply to some of modern physics, in that some of the results are extremely counter to common sense and impossible for us to truly comprehend.” Once again, [how’s my behavior so far], it is not possible to test the rational principles which must be assumed and believed IN ADVANCE of the reasoning process. I distinctly remember saying that these foundations CANNOT BE PROVEN. ----“I am not a “hyperskeptic.” I believe that we can learn a great deal about the world - that there is truth and that evidence can lead us to it. I also am not cynical about the urge to engage in metaphysics, including religious beliefs. However, I do believe that metaphysics does not give us truths in the same way that empirical study does: that metaphysics and religion are true in different ways and serve different functions than empirically-based truths do. This does not make me a post-modern hyperskeptic.” The definition of a hyperskeptic is one who believes that there is no correspondence between the rational mind and the rational universe. [Formally, that would be someone who believes that the images in the mind cannot apprehend the corresponding universals outside the mind.----Kantianism]] No one is saying that metaphysics give us truths the same way that empirical study does. What happens is this: metaphysics and science provide us with two ASPECTS of the SAME TRUTH. That by the way is one of the principles alluded to earlier [Unity of truth]. It does not provide us with competing truths that would contradict each other. If you believe what is in this paragraph, then you are not a hyper-skeptic. If you don’t believe it, then you are. Since you don’t believe in the unity of truth, I would, indeed, tend to classify you as a hyperskeptic.StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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Nakashima -- I’m just trying to get back to the point that personal witness about the reality of something beyond the physical universe is difficult to accept in a scientific discussion. Tell that to the multiverse crowd :-)tribune7_{April 10, 2009
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StephenB, you're an academic? Me too. I take it you're not a philosophy professor. :-) You're right that "cartoon" was unimaginative: it's my boilerplate for what I find overly simplistic in your formulations. I try to write carefully here, but I'm also working pretty fast; I'll be happy to admit that my most imaginative writing is not here. Frankly I'm surprised to meet an academic so cocksure about both the truth of his views and the irrationality of pretty much all of his opponents. But that's the relativist in me, I suppose. A minor point: you write, "aren’t you the same person who proposed to offer a nuanced view of Christianity by sending us to a Gnostic?" That is not what I said. Someone else quoted a Gnostic text and got jumped on as an ignoramus. I merely pointed out that extra-Biblical texts are taken seriously by serious historians of the period -- not as reflecting the truth about Jesus, but as reflecting some of the early traditions that grew up around Jesus. I was not defending the texts theologically. I believe you pointed out in response that some New Testament writers were writing against Gnostic heresies. I didn't respond at the time, but I'll say now: you're right. Among the things that suggests is that Gnostic traditions about Jesus arose pretty early -- early enough to merit response in New Testament texts.David Kellogg_{April 10, 2009
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I'm inclined to agree with Mark. While I appreciate vjtorley's approach to discussion, I find the jump to all these conclusions about God as logically necessary to be so full of self-fulfilling assertions that I don't know where to start. That is, if you believe in God, then you can in fact believe in all these things that vj says. But if you don't believe in God, and see no reason to, then all the assertions about God's nature, etc. have no weight, and are not compelling. I appreciate that his belief system is well thought out, and that he can express it well, but it is still one such belief system among several plausible ones about things that we can't really know. I just can't accept the jump to "God must be the explanation" (and I know this somewhat flippantly dismisses the depth of vj's thought), so I really can't say much about all the rest of the details.hazel_{April 10, 2009
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David K, To argue against irrational people is to encounter various degrees of irrationality in an attempt to raise the level of rational discourse. If Aristotle's dialogue partners were not aware of the principle of non-contradiction, then they were not being irrational even as he argued against them to teach it. They would have been irrational only to the extent that they would have rejected it after hearing about it. To be ignorant is not necessarily to be irrational. Irrationality is a function of either choosing to remain ignorant or of lacking the capacity to reason. At no other time in history have so many been so lacking in the capacity to follow throught from the beginning of a thought to the end. They don't think that truth exists, so naturally, they don't bother to exercise their intellectual muscles with sufficient exertion to arrive at it. Why make a rigorous effort and sacrifice to go on journey when there is no destination at the other end of the effort. That is why moral relativism renders otherwise intelligent people dull of mind. With regard to your assessment of my "cartoons," I shrug that off as lack of imagination from one who has yet to learn how to dramatize a subtle point with descriptive metaphors. Most academics, of which I am one, are texbooks wired for sound. They couldn't make themselves interesting if their life depended on it. They think intelligence is synonymous with boring. Let me assure you that it is not.StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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Re #371 vjtorley Thank you for a long response. It is alway hard to draw a line under these debates but I think this is the right time to do it. Our ways of thinking and using language are so different that I think it would take too long to find any common ground on which to conduct a debate. Maybe Hazel will continue to respond. If so, I will read with interest.Mark Frank_{April 10, 2009
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Stephen, I don’t know where you got your list of “right reason” principles, but there are of varying sorts, and, as David said, subject to debate to various degrees. For instance, one of my main points is that not all truths can be known. What ever the “true” nature is of of whatever metaphysical world our universe is a part of (if indeed that is so), can not be known. Asserting that “all truth can be known” is a fundamental principle of reason is false. Also you say that “Metaphysical truths are consistent with scientific truths [unity of truth].” This assumes that we can even know the truth about the metaphysical world, and I don’t think that is true. Again, I don’t think this statement of yours is anywhere like the few laws of logic that you include in your list. And you write, as you often have, “We have rational minds, we live in a rational universe, and there is a correspondence between the two.” This also is not a “law of right reason,” but rather a testable conclusion that has been born out by experience. And of course, I’m not sure whether “rational” is the correct word to apply to some of modern physics, in that some of the results are extremely counter to common sense and impossible for us to truly comprehend. And last you write,
Does it make sense to engage hyperskeptics in long winded discussions about abstruse scientific realities? It seems more fruitful to find out why that person chooses not to believe in truth in the first place. What good is evidence for those who don’t believe that evidence leads to truth or that there is any truth to be lead to?
I am not a “hyperskeptic.” I believe that we can learn a great deal about the world - that there is truth and that evidence can lead us to it. I also am not cynical about the urge to engage in metaphysics, including religious beliefs. However, I do believe that metaphysics does not give us truths in the same way that empirical study does: that metaphysics and religion are true in different ways and serve different functions than empirically-based truths do. This does not make me a post-modern hyperskeptic.hazel_{April 10, 2009
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StephenB, you did not say merely that to argue against LNC is to fall into irrationality: you wrote that "if you disavow any one of them, or even hesitate to accept them, you have abandoned the reasoning process and descended into irrationality." To argue for the LNC, as Aristotle did, is to assume the rationality of your opponents (who may doubt it). If those people had "abandoned the reasoning process and descended into rationality," Aristotle would not have engaged them in argument. I do tend to say your views are cartoonish, yes. I'd prefer not to. I only do so because you keep drawing cartoons. Also, I'd wager you call your opponents irrational far more than I call mine cartoonish.David Kellogg_{April 10, 2009
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Mr. Nakashima, Thank you for wishing me happy birthday (#291). Sorry for not getting back to you earlier. Regarding pi: the sequence may be infinite, but the formula generating pi is easy for a finite mind to understand: (4/1) - (4/3) + (4/5) - (4/7) + (4/9) - (4/11) ... (the Gregory-Leibniz series, originally discovered by Madhava of Sangamagrama circa 1400). No infinite regress of explanations here! But even for the case of a number with no such "compression formula," we don't speak of an infinite regress of explanations, because none of the digits in the sequence explain the others, anyway. Thus even mathematics can offer us no analogue of an infinite regress of explanations; all we have is an infinite sequence, which I'm perfectly happy with, anyway. You also write that inverse square laws emerge automatically from the three-dimensional structure of space. Maybe so; but what guarantees that space is three-dimensional? I'm sure you're well aware that it need not be. You also acknowledged that the constants of nature (such as c) don't have to have the values they do, either. Which brings me back to my point: the laws of nature are radically contingent, no matter how far we go in physics. They cry out for an explanation. I think both you and Hazel have raised the subject of virtual particles. All I will say here is that their popping into and out of existence is governed by a law which limits the size and duration of random energy fluctuations of the vacuum. Also, it would be a mistake to view the vacuum as nothing. If it still has mathematical properties, then it must be something. In that case, it does not constitute an exception to the principle that nothing comes from nothing (ex nihilo nihilo fit). I hope that helps.vjtorley_{April 10, 2009
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----David Kellogg: "Even the law of non-contradiction, probably the most philosophically ’solid’ item on Stephen’s list, has been rigorously complicated by a number of philosophers recently, most notably Graham Priest." Yes, and there is a good reason why many of them complicate it. They, like you, would prefer not to believe it so that they can bend truth any way they like. In any case, aren't you the same person who proposed to offer a nuanced view of Christianity by sending us to a Gnostic? Please!StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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----David: "If to argue about the LNC is to fall into irrationality, what are we to do about Aristotle, who argued for the LNC in the first place?" Do you even read what is written. I wrote that to argue AGAINST LNC is to fall into irrationality. You are really getting off the reservation. I guess my attempts at congeniality turned out to be a waste of time. So be it.StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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---David Kellogg: ‘Tis a very pretty picture you have painted, StephenB. It has precious little to do with science, though. As philosophy, it’s cartoonish and a little hollow. That's a little facile don't you think. You seem to take an awful lot for granted. What exactly is your understanding of the metaphysical foundations for science or, if you can, describe the relationship between metaphysics and science? Please be as expansive as you can since you appear to have an opinion on the matter. With regard to the "cartoonishness," a favorite denigration of yours that gets a bit overused when nothing of substance is forthcoming, there are times when concrete metaphors define points in ways that exposition of abstract principles cannot. One thing I have learned is that if someone knows what they are talking about, they can make the point in a variety ways. On the other hand, those who don't are reduced to kibbitzing from a small corner of the room. In any case, if you don't like the concrete example, then focus on the points, which are clear enough. Please provide your counter vision, fill up this thread with your wisdom and tell me where I am wrong.StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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That was cheap of me: apologies. Let me just point out that most of what StephenB list as axioms have been questioned in serious philosophy, most of them for centuries. Even the law of non-contradiction, probably the most philosophically 'solid' item on Stephen's list, has been rigorously complicated by a number of philosophers recently, most notably Graham Priest. A nuanced view of the LNC can be found in The Law of Non-Contradiction: New Philosophical Essays, edited by Priest et al. (Oxford UP, 2004). If to argue about the LNC is to fall into irrationality, what are we to do about Aristotle, who argued for the LNC in the first place?David Kellogg_{April 10, 2009
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Both Hazel (#337) and Mark Frank (#330) ask some very penetrating questions, which I'll do my best to address in this post. Mark Frank Regarding my key argument (see #327) for God's possessing intelligence, you write:
It is not clear to me that only an intelligence can guarantee intelligibility. That just seems to be an assertion.
My point here is that the very possibility of human thought is itself an everyday miracle. It is a miracle that we can think straight about anything at all - in fact, it is a double miracle, for it requires two surprising things to happen. First, the universe has to go on "behaving itself" by continuing to be comprehensible (i.e. amenable to scientific investigation) from one moment to the next, instead of breaking down into a buzzing, blooming, unintelligible mess. The fact that the universe continues to behave so nicely is a (very pleasant) surprise. Second, human minds have to go on being able to think straight, in this cosmos. I'm not talking about any particular individual's mind here: what I have in mind is the scientific enterprise as a whole. We all assume that it will be possible for at least someone on this planet to think straight and engage in rational debate - as we are now doing on this thread - tomorrow, but from what we know of the cosmos, we have absolutely no grounds for believing this. The fact that our expectations are routinely met is another pleasant surprise. So my question is: if there were something that was unconditionally able (i.e. able all by itself) to ensure that the miracle of human thought could continue in the future, what would that Something have to be? Now, thought aims at truth. Physical processes don't aim at truth, as such. Insofar as they aim at anything, they can only be said to aim at either success or survival. That's how evolution happens. I can therefore assume that evolution has given me a brain that will enable me to meet most of the threats I'll encounter during this life - e.g. the threat of starvation, or the threat of an approaching object moving at high speed. What I cannot assume is that simply because I evolved to meet these challenges, I am therefore able to think straight about theoretical matters. Without a reliable capacity for theoretical thought, we cannot do science at all - let alone debate metaphysics, bioethics or theology. Science is inescapably theoretical. If you have any doubts about this, I suggest you look at the Website www.climatedebatedaily.com and try to follow the ins and outs of the scientific debate on global warming. You need a good head for reasoning to follow those arguments. And you need a good head to spot the pitfalls in reasoning on both sides of the debate, to be able to critique the methodologies used, and to critically assess the plausibility of rival explanations for the temperature trends we have observed in the past few hundred years. At times we get caught in a logical fallacy when we argue, due to our cognitive "blind spots", but we seem to possess an uncanny capacity to take a step back and critically assess where we went wrong, and try to avoid these blind spots in the future. My question is: what makes us able to do that? What makes us able to think critically? Here's my answer. If thought aims at truth, then the only kind of Entity that is able to unconditionally ensure that we can continue in our quest for truth is a Being that possesses all truth by its very nature. For we could not rely on any other kind of Being: it, too would be all too fallible, or liable to break down, as we are, so we would be back at square one. So we are driven to postulate a Being whose nature it is to know everything that can be known - all truths, in all possible areas of enquiry. For if even a single area of enquiry lay outside its ken, then: (a) it would be no help to us when we were engaged in investigating that field; and (b) it would suffer from an ad hoc limitation - "can know everything except X" - prompting us to ask, "Why is it like that?" Such a Being would be contingent, and hence itself in need of explanation. An Ultimate explanation of reality cannot possess any ad hoc properties. Hazel Thank you for your thoughtful response. You wrote:
I am saying, as Mark Frank says, that there will always be limits to our understanding because, as you said, no matter what we learn, there will always be the question - why are things like that? And I don’t see how believing in a God of whatever conception solves the problem, because the same questions remains - why is it like that?
I agree with you and Mark Frank that there will always be limits to our understanding; for instance, I shall never be able to understand even my own mind, let alone the mind of God. But that does not mean that there are limits to human enquiry. The philosopher Germain Grisez, in his book "Beyond the New Theism," - to which I am greatly indebted for its rich metaphysical insights and its cogent theological argumentation - articulated a principle of human enquiry which makes pretty good sense to me: we should keep asking questions until we reach a point where it makes absolutely no sense to ask any more questions. Following that principle, I endeavored to explain the existence of the natural world, and the miracle of human thought, by pushing onwards with the question, "If it doesn't have to be that way, then why is it like that?" I didn't stop at some point in the empirical realm (e.g. the laws of nature) because the concepts I was employing (e.g. "cause," "explanation") are not empirical ones, as I argued above. In my quest, I was driven to postulate a Being whose nature it is to know everything that can be known, as an Ultimate Explanation of contingent reality, even though I have absolutely no understanding of how God can know everything by His own nature. Thus my finite mind can reach God through pushing human enquiry as far as any enquiry could possibly go - i.e. to an Ultimate Explanation- but my mind can never hope to understand God. Now, I have argued above that if God exists, God must be a Being whose nature it is to know everything that can be known - i.e. all truths. If you then ask me, "Why is God like that?", I can only answer, "Well, if God wasn't like that, then God would not be an Ultimate Explanation - in other words, God wouldn't be God." Contrast this with the question I asked you earlier, Hazel: why is your universe red, blue and green? In other words, why does it exhibit the fortuitous traits of complementarity, synchronicity and emergence, which you ascribe to it? Now, if your answer were to parallel the answer I gave above regarding God, you would have to say: "Well, if it didn't have those traits, then it wouldn't be a universe." But as I argued above, that's just not true: we can easily suppose that the universe might lack some or all of these lovely properties. Moreover, the properties seem to be separable from one another: we can imagine a red universe, or a blue one, or a green one, or a red-blue one, or a red-green one, or a blue-green one. Compare this with the definition of God: a Being whose nature it is to know everything that can be known and to love everything that should be loved. Is there anything ad hoc here? No. As I argued above, "know" and "love" are non-modal verbs: they tell us nothing about how the knowing and lovingare accomplished, so they are completely open-ended, and as such, suitable verbs for ascription to a Deity. In addition, the scope of God's knowing and loving is universal: everything. Once again, there are no arbitrary, ad hoc limitations which would provoke a human enquirer to ask: "But why does God have to be like that?". Finally, the number of defining attributes I ascribe to God is just two: knowledge and love. Of course, God can be said to have many other attributes, such as incorporeality, omnipresence and omnipotence, but I picked these two because I believe they explain all the other attributes God has. Now, is there anything ad hoc in my selection of these two? No. The reason is that perfect knowledge and love necessarily go hand-in-hand: you cannot separate the two. Perfect love presupposes perfect knowledge; and complete knowledge of something necessarily begets a perfectly appropriate love of that being. Perfect knowledge and perfect love differ from Yin and Yang in that the nexus between the two is essential, not accidental. They don't just happen to go together; they must accompany one another, and cannot even be imagined to exist apart from one another, as Yin and Yang can be imagined to do. (Also, in everyday experience, Yin and Yang often seem to be separated.) You might object that there are some human beings who are knowledgeable but unloving, but their knowledge is finite, fragmented and of the wrong sort: factual, third-person knowledge, as opposed to the first-person knowledge of how someone feels. Many people wrongly suppose that God does not possess first-person knowledge of the human condition. However, in a recent paper entitled "Omnisubjectivity" at http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/Z/Linda.T.Zagzebski-1/omnisubj3.doc , Professor Linda Zagzebski mounts a convincing case that an omniscient God must fully know how we feel, and (in my opinion) successfully rebuts theological objections to the propriety of God's having that kind of knowledge of our innermost feelings - including the feelings of bad people. You might like to read it, Hazel, and see what you think. Anyway, I hope I have addressed your question, "Why is God like that?" and shown how it is different from my question, "Why is the universe like that?" Mark Frank
When I talked about necessity being relative to a context I tried to explain that this context was the laws which would need to be broken if the necessary event did not happen. So the context for a necessary chess move is the rules of chess. The context for every action necessarily having a reaction is the laws of physics. I don’t see how "knowing and loving" provide a set of laws. What is it that prevents God from not existing? You have said it is not the laws of logic or maths. So what is it?
Your question, "What is it that prevents God from not existing?" has three possible meanings. (1) It might mean, "Why does God exist at all?" - i.e. "Why isn't there nothing at all in existence - not even God?" (2) Or it might mean, "What keeps God in existence?" - i.e. "What keeps God ticking, so to speak?" (3) Or it might mean, "Why doesn't God cease to exist?" - in other words, "What prevents God from dropping out of existence?" The third question is easy to answer. If God keeps the universe in existence, then God must transcend the limitations of space and time. Thus there can be no question of God ceasing to exist tomorrow, for instance. By the way, it doesn't matter whether you happen to regard God as atemporal [outside time] or omnitemporal [existing at all points in time] - in either case, there can be no question of God ceasing to exist tomorrow. Additionally, because God is an Ultimate Explanation that grounds the being of everything else, God does not depend on anything else. Nothing, then, could conceivably destroy God. Could God destroy Himself? No. For to do that, God would have to hate Himself. But if God's nature is to know and love perfectly, then God cannot do that. We've established that nothing can destroy God - not even God. Let's turn to the second question now: what (positively speaking) keeps God in existence? What keeps God "humming along", as it were? This is where your metaphysical insight that necessity is relative comes into play, Mark. You object, "I don’t see how 'knowing and loving' provide a set of laws." Now, if you mean a set of laws governing the cosmos, then I would respectfully disagree. Actually, I think that perfect 'knowing and loving' DOES provide a set (or a range of possible sets) of laws, as far as the worlds which God can create are concerned. For there are certain logically possible worlds that an omniscient, omnibenevolent Being cannot create: hostile worlds in which the evolution of intelligent life is physically impossible; clumsily designed worlds in which intelligent life is too fragile, requiring continual Deus ex machina interventions to prevent their intelligent beings from accidentally destroying themselves - "Whoops! The chain reaction is going to destroy our planet in 8 seconds!"; deterministic worlds which leave no room for libertarian freedom; and perfect-from-day-one worlds which leave no room for a choice between good and evil on the part of their agents. If, in addition, we suppose that God wanted to design the best robust world, among those worlds that allow intelligent life, libertarian freedom and a choice of good or evil, then the range of possible laws of nature that God could have designed for the cosmos might turn out to be very limited indeed. Given the built-in constraints on what God can do which I mentioned above, our world might turn out to be the best possible world, as far as its laws go - or at least, the fundamental laws (for I'm inclined to think that malevolent intelligences may have tinkered with some of the higher-level laws of nature, but that God had no choice but to allow them to do that, as it would have meant "cramping their style"). On the other hand, if you mean a set of laws governing God, then all I can do is point to God's nature. Now, I agreed with your point in an earlier post that necessity is relative to something; and I believe I met this objection by replying that God is inherently relational. God relates to Himself in a way that characterises His very nature: God is that Being whose nature it is to know and love perfectly. In other words, necessarily, God knows Himself and loves Himself. Of course, we have no hope of comprehending such an act of self-knowledge and self-love, but at least we can appreciate that there is a self-perpetuating dynamic in the "interior life" of God. That is what keeps God "humming along": love. God's love perpetuates itself: being perfectly good, God cannot help but keep loving Himself. And as I argued above, perfect knowledge and perfect love go hand-in-hand: they are inseparable, so God is inherently self-relational. Let's go back to the first question: why is there anything at all, even God? We may grant that God, if He exists, cannot fail to exist. We may also grant that God's existence is self-perpetuating. But doesn't it seem kind of lucky that God exists at all? What if He didn't? The flip answer to that is: well, we wouldn't be here to ask the question! But that's not really an answer. In answering this question, I'd like to return to a point Hazel made earlier, in #338, about the words "something" and "nothing": "those words aren’t as clearcut as we might think." We assume that the existence of absolutely nothing is conceivable, but that's only because we define "nothing" as an absence of all beings, and then mentally visualize it as a blank slate. However, the very term "being" is a profoundly mysterious one: what exactly are we affirming when we affirm that something exists? Try writing that sentence in first-order predicate calculus and you'll see the problem. You can say that something exists which is F (where F is some predicate), but you cannot simply say that something exists. So my response to the question of "Why isn't there nothing?" is: "It might not even make sense to suppose that nothing exists." There's another reason for being skeptical of the legitimacy of supposing that nothing might exist. If nothing exists, then nothing is intelligible. Can we mentally entertain that possibility? I don't think so. I said earlier that I saw no need to ascribe logical necessity to God; but that's because logical necessity is a rather shallow form of necessity, in my book. God's necessity springs from His inner dynamic of knowing and loving: in other words, from His own nature. That to me is a more profound form of necessity. Finally, I realize that the notion of God as a being whose nature it is to know and love perfectly might seem to a little "magical": we're used to ascribing knowledge and love only to embodied beings wpossessing a complex physical structure, so that talk of "a non-bodily act of knowledge" strikes us as "cheating." But we've got it the wrong way round: in reality, embodied beings can only be said to know by virtue of their being able to integrate information stored in disparate spatial locations (e.g. different regions of the brain). God doesn't need to integrate anything; He doesn't have separable parts. And God doesn't need to store any information, either: what He knows either follows from His nature (necessary truths about Himself) or it follows from His relationship to the world (contingent truths about the world).vjtorley_{April 10, 2009
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'Tis a very pretty picture you have painted, StephenB. It has precious little to do with science, though. As philosophy, it's cartoonish and a little hollow.David Kellogg_{April 10, 2009
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There are a few principles of right reason that we use to do scientific research, initiate rational discourse, and perform the act of ratiocination. Put another way, they are the rules of thought, or, if you like, the foundational principles on which we establish premises and draw conclusions. These principles are non-negotiable, meaning that if you disavow any one of them, or even hesitate to accept them, you have abandoned the reasoning process and descended into irrationality. Here are ten of the most important principles of right reason: Truth exists Truth can be known Higher truths illuminate lower truths [physics>>chemistry>>>biology] Metaphysical truths are consistent with scientific truths [unity of truth] Something cannot come from nothing. We have rational minds, we live in a rational universe, and there is a correspondence between the two A proposition cannot be true and false at the same time [and under the same formal circumstances [law of non-contradiction] A thing cannot be and not be at the same time [related to but not identical to the above] The law of the excluded middle. The whole is greater than any of its parts. None of these principles have ever been proven or, as far as I know, can be proven. They must be taken on faith. That means that individuals [and societies] must CHOOSE to accept them or reject them, and therefore choose to be reasonable or unreasonable. Take away any one of them and the entire rational enterprise collapses. So, when I say that Darwinists, skeptics, atheists, or agnostics are irrational, I don’t mean to say that they have low IQs. Some of them have very high IQs. Many of those who have been debating with me the last few days are quite intelligent. That is not the issue. The point is that, for one reason or another, they have chosen irrationality over rationality. I am, therefore, arguing against that choice and nothing more In the final analysis, it is impossible to reason with anyone who can’t accept the tools and principles of right reason just as surely as it is impossible to build a house with anyone who refuses to use hammers, nails, and boards. Imagine the carpenter’s helper informing the carpenter that he will not help build the house until the carpenter can prove to him that hammers, nails, and boards exist. What then, if in the middle of the carpenter’s presentation, his helper, believing that the existence of the carpenter tools has not been proven, begins to enquire about the existential “meaning” of hammers or “limitations” of boards, or the “linguistic context” through which we comprehend of nails? Will they ever get there house built? What if this anti-intellectual movement begins in the academy, imbeds itself into the consciousness of the students, and finally trickles down into the culture itself? What if many who have been steeped in postmodern, subjectivist, relativist nonsense, come here to debate? Does it make sense to engage hyperskeptics in long winded discussions about abstruse scientific realities? It seems more fruitful to find out why that person chooses not to believe in truth in the first place. What good is evidence for those who don’t believe that evidence leads to truth or that there is any truth to be lead to?StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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----Mr. Nakashima: "Law of the Excluded Middle?" Bless you Mr. Nakashima for hitting the target and shining your bright light on this thread!!!StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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Stephen, I'm not sure that we need this "leading me on" approach. I have taught proof by contradiction. I could easily offer several such proofs in mathematics. I can't even imagine how someone would confuse proof by contradiction with a wild guess. So why don't you just make your point, please?hazel_{April 10, 2009
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Mr StephenB, Law of the Excluded Middle?Nakashima_{April 10, 2009
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Near the top of this thread there was some discussion of US case law on whether atheism was a religion, as if that were dispositive. In the same spirit, due US rules of evidence accept "I saw in a vision of God that X..." is credible evidence? I'm going to guess not. I'm just trying to get back to the point that personal witness about the reality of something beyond the physical universe is difficult to accept in a scientific discussion.Nakashima_{April 10, 2009
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----"Hazel: "I am very familiar with proof by contradiction, Stephen." Yes, I am sure that you are. But, again, here is the question: Do you know why it is valid? What must be true for that proof by contradiction to be a proof and not just a wild guess.StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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Clive, I'm not saying religious experience as such is opposed to common sense. Certain religious experiences are, however, including miracles, visions, angelic appearances, prophecies etc. In the Bible, a number of crucial events fit these descriptions. A Bible stripped of such events would be considerably shorter and perhaps less interesting. Moreover, several books (for example Ezekiel, Revelation, a great deal of Isaiah) report visionary experiences that have no resemblance at all to common sense. It is not an accident that such books have been greatly loved by writers who were themselves subject to visions (Blake, Allen Ginsberg). I'm not arguing that we can never trust our senses. I'm claiming that radically transformative religious experiences may be a lot like intoxication.David Kellogg_{April 10, 2009
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I am very familiar with proof by contradiction, Stephen. A good example is the proof that the square root of 2 is irrational. Carry on.hazel_{April 10, 2009
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[B] A proposition cannot be true and false at the same time. Agree–Disagree.
Agree. But this does not exhaust the possibilities. A grammatically well formed proposition can nevertheless present many pitfalls. To cite one notorious example: "The present king of France is bald." Many of the problems evident in a discussion such as this arise from grammatically and logically well-formed statements that nevertheless present ambiguous meaning in the same way. They can be deployed for the purpose of conceptual legerdemain, and need be handled with care.Diffaxial_{April 10, 2009
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----Hazel: "Try this: The proposition “God exists” cannot be both true and false at the same time, but neither can the proposition “Wangles exist.” Right. I am not arguing for God's existence, which is another matter. In any case, we agree that the "proposition" that God exists and cannot exist cannot be maintained. Here is what I am after. In philosophy, and in science, one way to prove a proposition is to assume its opposite to show where it takes you, as in "reductio ad absurdum," [philosophy][logic] and the "null hyposthesis" [science]. Do you know on which principle both of these reasoning techniques depend? In other words, do you know what it is that must be true in order that these to approaches to be valid or reasonable?StephenB_{April 10, 2009
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David Kellogg, "Yes, of course: but the data of transformative religious experiences is often opposed to common sense. How is the person who has a spiritual vision able to determine whether it’s not chemically produced? The body produces its own hallucinogens." No, religious experience is not at all opposed to common sense. It is common sense that makes common sense out of the religious experience. Your statement about the body producing hallucinations is exactly what I was trying to get you to avoid saying in my earlier comment, because it will become self-refuting for you to make the claim that the body tricks the mind, and that we know not when. For by your stance, the body is the mind--unless you believe in a spirit separate from the body. But if we never knew when anything that we observe was not the result of a bodily hallucinatory trick on our mind, then that would also apply to your conclusions in any case whatsoever, not just the fantastic or exquisite. We can have no total skepticism of having an objective perspective, for that would also apply to ourselves, and make the very conclusion "The body produces its own hallucinogens" subject to the same fault and doubt as the hallucinations are supposed to imply. In other words, you would have to have special pleading that your own conclusion are valid, while saying that others have no such ability of discernment regarding reality.Clive Hayden_{April 10, 2009
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Slightly poor sentence because I wrote "can not" instead of "cannot." Try this: The proposition "God exists" cannot be both true and false at the same time, but neither can the proposition "Wangles exist." The logical validity of the statements about the propositions tell us nothing about whether God or wangles do exist, or how to go about finding out if they do.hazel_{April 10, 2009
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Mr StephenB, OK, I accept what you are saying, but I am disappointed. Since your argument relies on what these principles are, it would be helpful to have them explicit for other participants. To your questions [A] and [B]: [A] Disagree [B] Agree in some logical systems, disagree in others. With the right choice of axioms, you can prove anything. The only interesting question is which set of axioms most closely approximates the real world. Yes, I do hold in abeyance the statement that the real world is completely lawful in more than a statistical sense. Here's an example. Let's say I am using the real world to do math. Godel's theorem says there are theorems which are true in an axiomatic system, but not proveable in that system. I think that this means the world can be in states that we cannot explain.Nakashima_{April 10, 2009
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