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

----Diffaxial: "The outcome, then, is that with regard to the question of “does God exist” we are left with “We don’t know,” at least with respect to these particular arguments." You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. Several on this blog have disagreed with my formulation, but no one has yet addressed it except to dismiss it from a distance. I have to believe the reason for that is that if they examined it closely with an open mind, they would find it persuasive and, for some reason, they prefer to believe it doesn't work. A well reasoned argument is a little harder to refute when one actually gets into the details, which is why, in my judgment, so many avoid them.StephenB_{April 9, 2009
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I pretty thoroughly agree with Diffaxial on this, and I think he has said it well.hazel_{April 9, 2009
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StephenB:
To say that one may “utter a decisive statement” in a Godless universe is the equivalent of saying that one may exist in a Godless universe, since one must exist in order to utter the statements. So, why not just say that we don’t need God for our existence. Why all the extra added attractions? What am I missing here?
The import of my observation is not that it demonstrates or asserts that God doesn't exist. Rather, it asserts that your proofs of God's existence don't succeed, your claims notwithstanding. (Similar proofs that purport to demonstrate the non-existence of God by means of reasoning from definitions similarly fail.) The outcome, then, is that with regard to the question of "does God exist" we are left with "We don't know," at least with respect to these particular arguments.
In any case, the burden of proof is on you. If you believe that creatures can have being without a creator to confer being on them, you need to provide a logical argument for that proposition.
Again, the conclusion of my argument is not that "creatures can have being without a creator." Rather, the conclusion is that arguments of the kind you are making, and similar arguments purporting to establish the reverse, all fail. Hence I don't offer one. Hence my agnosticism.Diffaxial_{April 9, 2009
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---David: "StephenB, I think I understand. I’ll lay out my view with apologizes in advance for the length. It’s a very minor issue, but it takes some explaining." David, no need. In fact, I would like to start over in a manner of speaking. As I told Hazel, I am committed to increasing my patience and improving my tone. To put it in non-material terms, my conscience is speaking to me and telling me to be kinder.StephenB_{April 9, 2009
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Hazel, I will begin with a compliment. I congratulate you for being up front with your atheism and for taking the heat (at least the head I apply) associated with it. You would be surprised (well, maybe not) how many begin (and sustain) their correspondences by telling me what they are "not." So, I respect you for your forthrightness in that area. Further, I have decided to lower my voice a little bit and be a little more patient, and a little more congenial. OK, on the matter of logic: ----"Now I know you don’t agree, and the next sentence in your post reminds me of why. You wrote," Indeed, the principles from conducting logical investigations in the physical realm come from the metaphysical realm. ----"You believe that we can indeed “observe the metaphysical,” Well no, I wouldn't say we can observe them, [since they are non-material] but we can know them, or in some cases we can accept them as given [law of non-contradiction etc] ----"I think (corree if I am misrepresenting your position) because you believe that reason actually comes from the metaphysical - that we can indeed access objectively certain truths." I speak only of the foundations, but yes, we can access objectively certain truths if, and only if, we accept the foundational principles. Let's take the law of non-contradiction again--we cannot reason our way to it; we reason our way from it. If we don't accept it as given, we can't reason at all. So, in a way, we have to begin with faith. I look forward to your response, and I promise not to jump all over it. Welcome to the new me (until I fall off the wagon).StephenB_{April 9, 2009
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Hi vjtorley. I’ve skipped over replying to some of your posts recently, but I’ve appreciated reading them. Let me jump back in, close perhaps to where we left off many posts ago. You write,
For no matter what regular state of affairs we encounter in the natural or human world, we can always ask why it occurs, if we wish. Search as we will, we can find no reason why it has to be that way, and we can always imagine such a state of affairs ceasing to exist.
I absolutely agree, and feel that this is a vital point for people to understand. There will always be a limit to human knowledge because no matter how deeply we find explanations, we will always be able to ask but why is it like that? Even if we dig deeper, that fundamental question will always remain at the limit of wherever our understanding is at that time. But then you write,
My contention is that there must exist an ultimate and fully adequate explanation for every event - a kind of universal context, if you like - and that this context, which I call God, is an Agent, whose necessity arises from God’s inner dynamic of knowing and loving. God’s essential acts of self-knowledge and self-love are what makes God necessary.
This is a huge jump. It would one thing, to me, for you to profess that for you, belief in a personal loving God as the ultimate explanation is your resolution to the problem. It is quite another thing to claim that there must be “an ultimate and fully adequate explanation for every event,” and it is a even further step to claim that God, as a knowing and loving agent, is necessary. As I have been arguing, there are other plausible explanations that function as the universal context, and there is not any logical or empirical way of deciding which, if any, are true. Furthermore, there in fact may not be “an ultimate and fully adequate explanation for every event,” at least for human beings, and maybe ultimately. The possibility exists that the whole of existence, of which our universe is a part, is like a fractal set, and that no matter how deep you go there is always more there that is as rich (and in need of explanation) as that which came before.hazel_{April 9, 2009
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Stephen, earlier you said that 1) logic without some anchor in observable facts was helpless. Now, at 312, you say,
To say that the principles of right reason do not change with extension is to say that they do not change when we move from physics to metaphysics.
My first reaction to this is to point out that even if the “principles of right reason ... do not change when we move from physics to metaphysics,” the fact that we can observe the physical and not the metaphysical means that logic about the physical can have substance and logic about the metaphysical can not. Logic about what we might think the metaphysical is can have internal logical consistency, and it can function as a useful tool in our life, but it can’t really be about the metaphysical in the sense of making claims that the metaphysical really is one way or another, because we have no observations of the metaphysical to ground and test our claims. Now I know you don’t agree, and the next sentence in your post reminds me of why. You wrote,
Indeed, the principles from conducting logical investigations in the physical realm come from the metaphysical realm.
You believe that we can indeed “observe the metaphysical,” I think (correct me if I am misrepresenting your position) because you believe that reason actually comes from the metaphysical - that we can indeed access objectively certain truths. On that point we fundamentally disagree, but it does help explain, to me at least, the differences between us here on this issue of logic.hazel_{April 9, 2009
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Mark Frank (#283) Thank you for taking the trouble to clarify your philosophical differences with me. I've been thinking carefully about your comments, as they contain a number of valid metaphysical insights. You point out that explanation is always relative to some context. Here, I would like to make a distinction. First, an explanation is a context: indeed, the whole point of an explanation is to provide a context for the event it explains. Second, an explanation is typically only a partial one: the context is limited, and can only be understood relative to some set of background assumptions. These background assumptions may be widely shared, which is why people living in the same culture often don't feel the need to articulate them. We may feel no need to question these assumptions. They may reflect a social status quo - "It's always been done that way" - or the regularities in the natural world (laws of nature) which we commonly take for granted. In ordinary life, our explanations typically stop at the point where everyone nods their heads and understands: "I know what you mean." But the whole point of the cosmological argument is to shake us out of this metaphysical complacency, and start questioning the everyday assumptions which we take for granted. For no matter what regular state of affairs we encounter in the natural or human world, we can always ask why it occurs, if we wish. Search as we will, we can find no reason why it has to be that way, and we can always imagine such a state of affairs ceasing to exist. For the laws of nature are radically contingent, and human affairs even more so. And as such, they are precarious: even though they may hold sway now, they are liable to break down, at any time in the future. We have seen that partial explanations are metaphysically inadequate, as they ignore the wider context. But we also saw that even when we viewed nature as a totality, contingency reigned supreme: we found no trace of necessity anywhere. My contention is that there must exist an ultimate and fully adequate explanation for every event - a kind of universal context, if you like - and that this context, which I call God, is an Agent, whose necessity arises from God's inner dynamic of knowing and loving. God's essential acts of self-knowledge and self-love are what makes God necessary. Now, let's look at the example you cite: Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969. This is a rather "messy" example, as what we actually have here are at least three events, occurring on various levels, which happen to coincide at a particular point in space and time. Thus we have: (i) purposeful decisions made by an agent (Neil Armstrong) working the other astronauts in the Apollo 11 crew. We also have: (ii) a human artifact (the lunar module) which had to function correctly under harsh lunar conditions. And of course, there are: (iii) the laws of physics, which had to continue to hold, as they always have done. For each of these events, we can legitimately demand an explanation, and in the end we have to come back to God. Let's start with (i). The space race partially explains the human endeavor, but I'm sure many children living in the 1960s must have asked their parents why the USA and USSR were competing for control of space in the first place. Now, it would be tempting to go back in time, and talk about how the Soviet Union arose in the first place, but that kind of historical explanation would be wrong-headed, in my opinion, and it would also be unsatisfying, for it does nothing but beget an endless stream of further historical questions. Past occurrences explain nothing, except insofar as the events they gave rise to continue to obtain now. Parents of children living in the 1960s would have been wiser to cut to the chase, and explain the space race as the product of a battle of competing ideologies (democracy and communism), which were themselves based on different conceptions of human good (individualism versus Statism), which were themselves based on different conceptions of the human person (a libertarian agent versus a spark of living matter governed by chemical, biological and sociological laws). During the 1960s, the two superpowers adhering to these respective were locked in a struggle for domination of the world, and of space as well. But even here, we cannot stop. After all, why DO people - and societies - have different concepts of the human person in the first place? And we cannot answer this question in biological or neurological terms. The reason has to do with our nature as rational animals, who struggle to make sense of the world around them: in other words, it goes back to how we think, and what enables us to think in the first place. The religious explanation is that we have been created with an intellect that is able to seek out truth, but is not programmed to discover it; hence we often stumble into error, and embrace mistaken ideas of who we are and what is good for us. In other words, God gave us free will, and the space race during the 1960s was a political manifestation of that. That's the ultimate context for the human decision to land a man on the moon. Now let's look at (ii): the mechanical workings of the lunar module. The module is an artifact, designed to work under harsh lunar conditions by scientists who took the trouble to investigate the moon before sending people there, and also by engineers who designed a mechanical device that could operate under these conditions. They would have also had to factor in glitches that may have occurred: for example, what if there was more dust on the moon than scientists expected? (Back in the 1960s, there was some anxiety that the lunar module might get bogged down.) In any case, the engineers would have had to perform lots of experiments, under laboratory conditions designed to replicate those on the moon (no atmosphere, weaker gravity, and so on) before they could be reasonably confident that their module would perform as it was meant to, and would not break down. What is the unexamined background assumption here? It is that laboratory experiments are possible in the first place, and that natural conditions obtaining at one point in space and time (the moon, in 1969) can be replicated at another point (Earth, in 1968). In other words, science works. And the point of the cosmological argument is that science cannot explain what science presupposes. Science cannot explain why the universe "behaves itself" in such a way as to make experiments possible. The very possibility of performing experiments makes no sense unless the world is intelligible to our minds; and nothing in Nature guarantees that it should be so. Now, what could possibly serve as a guarantee of that? Only some Intelligence that keeps the cosmos in being, and whose nature it is to know and love perfectly - in other words, an essentially rational, mind-friendly Personal Being, and not a capricious entity. The same considerations hold for event (iii): the fact that the laws of physics continue to hold. The scientists who sent men to the moon were thoroughly conversant with the laws of physics, which they assumed would hold in space, because for centuries, they had observed celestial bodies moving in accordance with these laws. But in reality, there is no such guarantee that these laws will continue to hold, unless they are seen as the workings of an essentially rational Cosmic Intelligence, who designed the universe. As regards the possibility of an infinite number of explanantions of event: well, there may be an infinite number of perspectives on one event, I grant, and hence an indefinitely large number of partial explanations, depending on what one wants to include in or exclude ifrom one's explanation. However, none of the foregoing points shows there can be an infinite regress of partial explanations, each situated inside a larget one like a set of Russian dolls. Explanations have to stop somewhere, and as I ahve argued, there can only be one ultimate explanation: God. And now to your other point of substance, Mark: that necessity is always relative to some context. That was a profound insight. If God is necessary, He must be necessary relative to the contexts of the operations that he necessarily performs: knowing and loving. These are metaphysically inseparable, in a Being whose nature it is to know and love perfectly. Such a Being cannot know without loving, and cannot love without knowing. Thus the doctrine of the Trinity, as expounded by Augustine, may have quite a lot to tell us about the necessity of God. At any rate, the answer lies in the inner life of God: knowing and loving. Got to go to work now. Hope that helps.vjtorley_{April 9, 2009
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And thanks, David. I think I work pretty hard to provide context and make it clear who and what I am addressing - in fact, writing posts that do that well is both one of my goals and one of my interests in even participating in internet discussions.hazel_{April 9, 2009
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Stephen, in 309, says,
It is not common to try to hold one person (me) accountable for something someone else (Diffaxial) says.
There is possibly some confusion here. Stephen, you wrote in 285,
To say that one may “utter a decisive statement” in a Godless universe is the equivalent of saying that one may exist in a Godless universe, since one must exist in order to utter the statements. So, why not just say that we don’t need God for our existence. Why all the extra added attractions? What am I missing here?
The words “why not just say that we don’t need God for our existence” were your words, not Diffaxials. I was responding to your statement “Why all the added attractions” by pointing out, simply, that you are right - we can just skip all the arguments and say that God is not a necessary hypothesis for existence. I quoted you, and was responding to you, even though it was Diffaxial that you were addressing. But I did not hold you accountable for something Diffaxial said - I responded to what you said.hazel_{April 9, 2009
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StephenB, I think I understand. I'll lay out my view with apologizes in advance for the length. It's a very minor issue, but it takes some explaining. hazel quoted you as saying "So, why not just say that we don’t need God for our existence." In fact, those words are yours [in 285], but you were responding to, and, in a sense, parodying Diffixial's point of view, right? Well, that makes for a complicated tonal issue. Are you saying hazel should have attributed those words to Diffixial? Obviously not, since the words are yours. Should hazel have attributed the position those words represent to Diffixial? That may be reasonable, but the words are yours, and they're highly quotable. The question becomes: how can hazel quote you but refer to Diffixial? This is a common issue when a writer seeks to represent the position of someone they disagree with. It's easy to represent the conversation a little flatly, taking out the nuance of what happened and maybe allowing readers to misunderstand. As a college writing professor, I see this kind of thing frequently. But if hazel made an error, it is a slight one -- one of losing the tone while correctly attributing the quote. hazel wrote:
StephenB writes, “So, why not just say that we don’t need God for our existence.”
Technically true, but you have a (small) point. It might have been better for hazel to write:
StephenB summarizes Diffixial as asking, “So, why not just say that we don’t need God for our existence.”
That's worth a minor markdown on hazel's grade, but it's small potatoes.David Kellogg_{April 9, 2009
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StephenB, I didn't see where hazel represented Diffaxial's words as your own. If that happened, then you have a point I suppose. I usually attribute such mistakes, when they occur, to careless writing. I'd suggest correcting and moving on. A person who gets too sensitive about such things is likely to start accusing everybody of "selective hyperskepticism" etc.David Kellogg_{April 9, 2009
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But StephenB (and sorry if I'm interrupting here), the statement that "the principles from conducting logical investigations in the physical realm come from the metaphysical realm" presumes the existence of a metaphysical realm. Isn't that part of what's at issue? I continue to think your argument may be formally valid but not necessarily sound (in that we don't enough information to know, for example, that the universe itself is contingent).David Kellogg_{April 9, 2009
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----David Kellogg: "I thought hazel was just trying to chime in on a free-flowing conversation (earlier parts of which hazel had participated in). People do the same with me all the time. It’s no big deal." You are misrepresenting what happened (accidently? purposely?)Chiming in on a conversation is not the same thing as attributing the words of person [a] to person [b] and then trying to gain mileage out of the misunderstanding.StephenB_{April 9, 2009
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----Hazel: “Earlier (269) Stephen agreed that “Brute logic alone is helpless, but logic in conjunction with observable facts can tell us a great deal.” -----“I responded by pointing out that the only observable facts we have are inside this universe, so it is a mistake to think that logic can tell us anything about whatever metaphysical “reality” is outside this universe because we don’t have any observations of what is outside the universe.” Hazel first labored under the misapprehension that the cosmological argument uses only “brute logic,” confusing it with the ontological argument. When I informed her that the cosmological argument does not rely solely on brute logic, that it also takes observation into account, she continued to use the term “brute logic” anyway, indicating that she was not in any way following the argument. I can only wonder if she get’s it now. ------But Stephen have avoided the issue has avoided the issue: even if the “principles of right reason do not change with extension,” their use can’t be extended to what is outside the universe because, as we agreed, without some observable facts, logic is helpless. Not only did I not avoid the issue, I tried on several occasions to explain the critical point at issue: To say that the principles of right reason do not change with extension is to say that they do not change when we move from physics to metaphysics. Indeed, the principles from conducting logical investigations in the physical realm come from the metaphysical realm. -----Hazel: “So Stephen’s remark about the Big Bang reinforces my point, but does not challenge it.” No, it doesn’t. To confirm my point, all I need to do is ask a simple question: Is it not true that science’s discovery of the big bang was quickly followed by the assumption that the universe “began in time.” Did not the atheists in the scientific community go ballistic when they heard this, knowing that it pointed the finger straight to a creator? You didn’t hear them saying logic stops at creation’s door.StephenB_{April 9, 2009
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I was asking if other people could access valid and strong religious experiences with the help of natural substances. The point with Paul is that you don't have to (and you really ought not to look to drugs to have one). One of the differences I was going to point out between Paul and the Magic Mushroom Trip Reporters was the latter are inane, self-indulgent young people waxing profound about inconsequential matters using poor grammar. Paul, otoh, was an intelligent man with worldly success whose experience would cause him to give up all status, and who would go on to have a greater effect on history than just about anybody who had ever lived, some say even more so than the Lord, Himself. And the point I was originally making way back is that some people need an intense religious experience (Paul) but others don't (those to whom he witnessed).tribune7_{April 9, 2009
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I thought hazel was just trying to chime in on a free-flowing conversation (earlier parts of which hazel had participated in). People do the same with me all the time. It's no big deal.David Kellogg_{April 9, 2009
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----"Hazel: "And I knew that you were addressing Diffaxial, but it is quite common in internet discussions for one to comment on posts addressed to others." It is not common to try to hold one person (me) accountable for something someone else (Diffaxial) says.StephenB_{April 9, 2009
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Mr Tribune7, Those are some fascinating accounts of experiences from eating mushrooms. Aside from the visual effects, some people report incredibly profound religious experiences. I apologize if anyone thought I was implying that Paul's experience was a result of eating mushrooms. I was not. I was asking if other people could access valid and strong religious experiences with the help of natural substances. But even so, to me these experiences are interior to an individual, and at least today, we have no way of sharing them directly with each other.Nakashima_{April 9, 2009
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Earlier (269) Stephen agreed that “Brute logic alone is helpless, but logic in conjunction with observable facts can tell us a great deal.” I responded by pointing out that the only observable facts we have are inside this universe, so it is a mistake to think that logic can tell us anything about whatever metaphysical “reality” is outside this universe because we don’t have any observations of what is outside the universe. Stephen, at 280, replied
The principles of right reason do not change with extension. Otherwise science would never have discovered the big bang, much less would they have concluded that it represented a beginning in time.
The Big Bang is within this universe, and we can gather evidence about it and thus reason logically about it. But Stephen have avoided the issue has avoided the issue: even if the “principles of right reason do not change with extension,” their use can’t be extended to what is outside the universe because, as we agreed, without some observable facts, logic is helpless. So Stephen’s remark about the Big Bang reinforces my point, but does not challenge it.hazel_{April 9, 2009
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Perhaps Ms. O'Leary agrees with me that drug experiences and transformative spiritual experiences may be connected. There may even be a biochemical commonality. From The Spiritual Brain, page 338:
Various lines of evidence have demonstrated that entheogens — psychedelic drugs used in a spiritual context . . . — can lead to genuine states of unitive consciousness. . . . .
The Spiritual Brain doesn't seem to discuss dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a naturally occurring hallucinogen.David Kellogg_{April 9, 2009
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Clive, I'm not talking about everyday experiences. I'm talking about transformative religious experiences, using "Damascus road" as a shorthand for that. Such experiences are by definition outside the norm, and they often resemble being drunk or on drugs. Consider one of my favorite verses, Acts 2:15:
These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning!
The Christian environmentalist, novelist, and poet Wendell Berry has pointed out that psychodelic mushrooms, marijuana, tobacco, alcohol all have early uses in religious ritual (the communion in the case of Christianity).David Kellogg_{April 9, 2009
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David Kellogg, "I have no idea if “Damascus Road” experiences are different from experiences triggered as hallucinogenic mushrooms. I think there’s probably a wide range of both kinds of experiences, and both kinds are open to trust and doubt." The difference would be whether someone were on psychotropic drugs, or not. And if we say that any ol' situation can produce such an effect, then we get self-referentially incoherent, for your conclusion above would be subject to the same doubt and trust. In other words, there cannot be a total skepticism about our minds and whether they are naturally or by the aid of mushrooms producing hallucinations, for we would have no other standard by which to compare even our "lucid" comparisons.Clive Hayden_{April 9, 2009
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correction: triggered byDavid Kellogg_{April 9, 2009
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I have no idea if "Damascus Road" experiences are different from experiences triggered as hallucinogenic mushrooms. I think there's probably a wide range of both kinds of experiences, and both kinds are open to trust and doubt.David Kellogg_{April 9, 2009
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No, I understand what you are saying, and I think you are wrong. And I knew that you were addressing Diffaxial, but it is quite common in internet discussions for one to comment on posts addressed to others.hazel_{April 9, 2009
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Hazel, please read what is written. ----Diffixial wrote: "As I said before, one may observe that it may be possible to utter these ostensibly decisive statements in a universe that is actually devoid of God. In that instance, although the logic of the argument is unchanged, it would be apparent from some remove that these “decisive” arguments are mistaken, nevertheless." So, quite naturally, I explained that it would be much simpler to untangle that mess and just assert the typical atheist line that creatures don't need creators. And now you write: -----"Uh, this is what I have been saying all along." I know very well what you have been saying. I wasn't addressing you, I was addressing the person who made the statement. Please, please read for context. You write further: ----"So, yes, we don’t need God for our existence. -----"I’m glad that’s cleared up!" It's not a good idea to talk an idea to death when that idea is the result of a misapprehension. The problem is not that others don't know what you are saying. The problem is that you don't know what others are sayingStephenB_{April 9, 2009
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Nakashima-san If my son told me Santa Claus lived at 91N, I would have to take it on faith. You can't investigate what's at 91N?? Where can I read about the differences? There is life outside books :-) Magic Mushroom Trip Report The Conversion of Paul ( a pretty good summary at Wiki tribune7_{April 9, 2009
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StephenB writes, "So, why not just say that we don’t need God for our existence." Uh, that is exactly what I have been saying. God is not the only plausible hypothesis for the existence of the universe, and we have no means for testing which plausible hypothesis, if any, is true. (My belief is that we are probably incapable of even conceiving of the correct hypothesis.) So, yes, we don't need God for our existence. I'm glad that's cleared up! :)hazel_{April 9, 2009
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Mr Tribune7, Where can I read about the differences?Nakashima_{April 9, 2009
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