Disappointed with Shermer

_{idnet.com.au
April 6, 2009

Intelligent Design

1}_{Categories
Intelligent Design}

Share: Facebook; Twitter/X; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

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

my two earlier refutations of your notion (and Hazel’s) that the laws of cause and effect apply only INSIDE the universe still hold
This passage, another moment of self-congratulation, is interesting. First, you have refuted nothing at all. Second, you have not correctly identified my (or hazel's) "notion." I have not said that the laws of cause and effect apply only inside the universe. I have said, rather, that we can make no claims about what does or does not apply outside the universe. To quote Wittgenstein, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." That contention is not refuted by [A], [B] or both together, since these are claims about the history of knowledge. I'd say the history is more complicated in each case, but even if you are accurate, it has nothing to do with that contention. What you said to me applies to you: "The best thing for you to do is concede the point, because you have no case."David Kellogg_{April 17, 2009
April
04
Apr
17
17
2009
04:24 AM
4
04
24
AM
PDT}

VJ: this may be considered a continuation of my post at 605, above.
The logical consequences of disbelief in God are that the laws of nature could break down at any moment, that our rational deliberations are not free, and our rational deliberations are not trustworthy, except when they pertain to purely practical matters. Believing all that would be enough to drive any normal person round the twist, as I have repeatedly stated on this thread.
What you mean to say is that a consequence of disbelief in God is the further belief that nature could break down at any moment, as well as belief that our rational deliberations are not free or trustworthy, except as they pertain to purely practical matters. Empirically, this is patently false, as I instantiate a person who does not harbor a belief in God, yet also does not experience or expect these supposed consequences. Nor have I gone round the twist. Ordinary human cognition only occasionally, in practice, attains the ideals of rationality. Ample research demonstrates that most day to day reasoning is ad hoc, informed by quick and dirty heuristics (including prejudices), and characterized by "satisficing" (settling upon good-enough rather than ideal solutions). The more formal and ideal tools of philosophical reasoning and scientific inference are cultural inventions - the crown jewels of our culture, IMHO - that have accumulated through 500 years of refinement, oftentimes through a process of trial and error. Reasoning at a level suitable for scientific discovery typically requires considerable tutelage (the doctoral level being the most common entry level credential for most scientific professions) and generally also entails participation in a community of peer review that often discovers and corrects faulty individual reasoning and argumentation and unsustainable conclusions despite the best efforts of individual practitioners to avoid same. This additional level of "distributed cognition" contributes crucially to the reach of scientific reasoning, and it is ultimately scientific communities as wholes that accomplish the acquisition of new knowledge. Indeed, the cultural invention of scientific communities themselves are among these powerful tools. Even the most successful attainments of those communities are the culmination of a community-instantiated process of trial, error and correction, and are characterized by many futile efforts and dead ends, as well as by dramatic successes. The point of the forgoing is that value of scientific reasoning is founded in its history and in its pragmatic successes, not in an unassailable epistemological grounding that confers upon its conclusions absolute certainty, nor a logically compelled grounding in a timeless, agentic first cause that guarantees the future intelligibility of the universe. Indeed, above you allowed that we have grounds for relying upon our rational deliberations in practical matters; I place the vast majority of the scientific enterprise, including its reliance upon induction, within this class. The history I describe above has yielded myriad practical, mathematical, and experimental techniques that yoke theory and observation and test the former by means of the latter to yield knowledge that meets the standard of "no reasonable doubt." Of course knowledge attained by these means is often plastic and provisional - that is a strength of these methods - and sometimes only attains the "preponderance of evidence" standard, not the more rigorous "reasonable doubt" standard. Yet as you note above, the maximum degree of certainty that may be conferred by the cosmological argument vis these questions of rationality, freedom, and confidence in the persistence of the world is "beyond reasonable doubt" - and as above I personally remain convinced that there are reasonable doubts to be had regarding the reasoning employed. The topic of "freedom" is too large to address in a pre-breakfast post, other than to observe that the problems that arise for freedom in the instance of theism/deism (eg. the history of torment that has surrounded questions such as moral freedom in the face of omniscience and predestination) are at least as large, if not larger than, those that are presented absent a timeless, necessary agentic first cause. Should those of us who are not convinced by your arguments rend our garments and descend into lunacy because the foundations of the scientific world view do NOT attain status as metaphysically and epistemologically certain? Have you?Diffaxial_{April 17, 2009
April
04
Apr
17
17
2009
04:24 AM
4
04
24
AM
PDT}

----Mr. Nakashima: "It is true that the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees”?" It seems very reasonable to call that a mathematical truth.StephenB_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
10:34 PM
10
10
34
PM
PDT}

----"[A] I think that motivations for resisting the Big Bang in the early decades of the theory varied. Some resisted because of the seeming (but I believe false) religious implications." That is correct. That means that those most qualified to render a judgment understood that cause and effect do not, as you contend, stop at creation's door. If there was any chance that your view (or Hazel's view) was plausible or even reasonable, they would have seized the opportunity, because they did not want to accept the implications of their findings. ----"Some may have resisted becuase the evidence wasn’t enough in the early decades. So what? The evidence accumulated from different sources, and eventually, by the 60s, there was enough to convince almost everybody in the field." The "so what" is that they didn't labor under your misguided notion that cause and effect are limited to the "inside of the universe." [B] "The history you provide is contestible." By who? Early scientists accepted the idea that God created a rational universe, the deciding world view that launched the whole scientific enterprise. That is simply a fact of history. ----"What I am to do since there are numerous ways in which I take issue with both [A] and [B]." The best thing for you to do is concede the point, because you have no case.StephenB_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
09:48 PM
9
09
48
PM
PDT}

---David Kellogg: "I very much enjoyed how you could follow “Every argument should stand on its own” with “As a citizen of the United States, I am watching my culture crumble because the mindless.... Yes, I forgot to hit my enter key, and the paragraphs didn't separate. Oh woe is me.StephenB_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
09:15 PM
9
09
15
PM
PDT}

StephenB, [A] I think that motivations for resisting the Big Bang in the early decades of the theory varied. Some resisted because of the seeming (but I believe false) religious implications. Some may have resisted becuase the evidence wasn't enough in the early decades. So what? The evidence accumulated from different sources, and eventually, by the 60s, there was enough to convince almost everybody in the field. [B] The history you provide is contestable. The development of science is profoundly multifaceted, and Burtt's 1925 dissertation is hardly the last word. What I am to do since there are numerous ways in which I take issue with both [A] and [B].David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
09:08 PM
9
09
08
PM
PDT}

Mr StephenB, Thank you for answering my first question. What is your view on the statement "It is true that the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees"? I hope you don't consider this question any harder to answer than the questions you have asked other discussants on this thread.Nakashima_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
08:51 PM
8
08
51
PM
PDT}

Clive, Lacan is notoriously difficult in English. The best place to go for that particular concept is Lacan's Seminar XX and an essay by Lacan transalator Bruce Fink, Chapter 6 of Fink's book Lacan to the Letter.David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
08:43 PM
8
08
43
PM
PDT}

Anticipating vjtorley @608 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote," Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet."StephenB_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
08:39 PM
8
08
39
PM
PDT}

HouseStreetRoom, Thank you for your contribution. I'm glad you like vjtorley, he is impressive. Next time maybe add to the discussion? I've seen you lurking around here. Don't be afraid :) David, Right, sehnsucht is close to nostalgia, but not quite. If you're ever interested in following up on Lewis's description of this, you can find it in his essay The Weight of Glory, and in the Afterword to the Third Edition of The Pilgrim's Regress, and in his autobiography Surprised by Joy. Sehnsucht is also called The Blue Flower: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_flower I'll look up Lacan's description, you've peaked my interest.Clive Hayden_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
08:26 PM
8
08
26
PM
PDT}

David Kellogg: Now that we have both vented, (not a bad idea), my two earlier refutations of your notion (and Hazel's) that the laws of cause and effect apply only INSIDE the universe still hold. Here they are again. Do you have an answer for them? [A] When atheist scientists discovered evidence for the big bang, they became very upset and had to be dragged in kicking and screaming before they could accept the finding. Why was that? It was because it showed first of all that the universe began in time and second that the universe was contingent and third that it pointed toward an antecedent cause. Do you think they were consoled with the hope that causation stopped at creation’s door? The record shows that they were not. They understood all too well what it meant. [B] We need not worry about whether science and metaphysics embrace the same principles of cause and effect because metaphysics PROVIDED those principles in the first place. It was the Christian notion that God created a rational universe that launched the scientific enterprise and it was the early scientists conviction that they were “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” that prompted them to follow through in spite of all their early discouragements. If you had told them that the laws of cause and effect are irrelevant to the cause of the universe, they would not have been open to that proposition. The more we learn about science, the more reason we have to believe in a first cause. More evidence may be found in the work, “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science,” by Burtt.StephenB_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
08:02 PM
8
08
02
PM
PDT}

vjtorley @608, Amazing...simply amazing. Thank you. You've made my night with your analysis.HouseStreetRoom_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
07:43 PM
7
07
43
PM
PDT}

I don’t know how much longer I can take time to keep this up, but something vj said a couple of days ago caused me to step back and maybe get a little bigger understanding of what’s going on in this discussion. So I guess I’m going to dig in and try to get my thoughts out on the table. I had written,
Theists have no problem with God, who has no beginning, causing an effect that has a beginning, but you’ve decided without any evidence, just based on your own biases, that an impersonal cause can’t do this.
In response, vj wrote at 515,
As my preceding post makes clear, the real difference between the two cases is that while a personal agent who makes free choices (even if they are timeless ones) might be able to cause the beginning of the cosmos in a way that respects the freedom of the creatures that exist within it, there is no way known for an impersonal cause to do this. For if the impersonal cause’s generation of the cosmos is an act of necessity dictated by its built-in program, then we are no more free than we would be in Newton’s clockwork universe.If on the other hand, the impersonal cause’s generation of the cosmos is a random act, then that is no better for us: purely random acts are not free either, and cosmic randomness per se does not enable free choices on our part.It is difficult to see what other alternatives you could posit.
I notice two important things about vj’s statement. First, theists see God as being able to choose to act - to be able to be outside the world of space and time and yet able to freely initiate things in space and time - to cause the contingent not because of prior cause but because of freely willed choice. God must be personal because that is associated with freedom, first for God and eventually for his creations, including us. Second, vj contrasts this with an impersonal Newton’s clockwork universe, which, even if some type of true randomness is included, does not allows for freedom. Then, vj says “It is difficult to see what other alternatives you could posit.” Well, I’d like to offer an alternative, but first I want to explain a bit about why I don’t think vj et al will be able to accept it as viable. Here is a common problem in discussions between people with significantly views about something. Person A has a position. Instead of finding out the details of person B’s position, person A just assumes that person B’s position is the antithesis of person A’s. That is, person A stays within his own framework and projects his ideas about what B must believe if B rejects A’s ideas, rather than trying to find out what B actually believes, because to understand B, A must abandon his framework and try to, temporarily, look at the world in a different way. (I read over that sentence again - it really does parse, I think.) So what I am understanding now is that when I talk about an impersonal uncaused cause, vj et al think about just another set of laws such as we experience in our world, and since they are convinced that such laws cannot be creative - cannot design - and cannot account for free will, the idea of the uncaused cause as just a bigger version of such laws is inconceivable. So I am going to return to talking about Taoism as an alternative for vj to think about. First, a couple of disclaimers. First by Taoism I really just mean my take on some central concepts of Taoist philosophy. I’m not any kind of scholar on this, and I know very little about Taoism as a practicing religion (which is irrelevant here.) Second, I’m not arguing that there is any logical necessity for Taoism - I’m just presenting what I think is a viable philosophy that offers an a-theistic metaphysical explanation for the nature of the world - one which does not include a personal God. My primary goal is to contrast Taoism to the mistaken idea, illustrated by vj above, that the only alternative to God is a set of metaphysical laws punctuated by random chance. But I’ve run out of time tonight, especially since I find that I’d like to indulge myself and write something somewhat lengthy - I’m tired and I have to go to work tomorrow. So, most likely, I’ll return to offer vj an alternative view to theism that is not just a set of laws analogous to the natural laws that we find in our physical universe.hazel_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
07:38 PM
7
07
38
PM
PDT}

Let’s assume that the sun has risen day after day, for the past 4.54 billion years at EXACTLY 6 o’clock.
Nonsense. As anybody who followed last week's news of Birchat HaChama knows, the sun has only been rising for 5769 years. :-)David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
07:32 PM
7
07
32
PM
PDT}

vj, I don't think it's very useful to make me a character in your play. I can assure you that the hazel you have written is not the hazel I would be in that conversation.hazel_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
07:25 PM
7
07
25
PM
PDT}

Clive, Sehnsucht in Lewis is an interesting concept. The closest term in my regular vocabulary is desire as described in the psychoanalytic work of Jacques Lacan. In Lacan, desire emerges out of a lack experienced by human subjects in the fulfillment of demands. It's an enormously complicated notion, but basically it goes like this: what we want is recognition by an Other (which in his late career Lacan sometimes spoke of in theological terms): our desire is always for the other's desire, or rather, we want the Other to desire us. Desire in Lacan is often misrecognized and displaced onto local (shall we call them contingent?) others, leading Lacan to distinguish between the Other and the other (object petit a, since other in French is autre). This displacement Lacan speaks of as a shift from the symbolic to the imaginary axis. The real work (with the Other) takes place on the symbolic axis, but daily life (as a play against the other) takes place on the imaginary axis. Anyway, what Lewis says about Sehnsucht has a lot of resonance with Lacan's notion of desire in his very late career. There's a similar sense of longing associated with the perceived unity of experience we find in childhood. Almost but not quite nostalgia.David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
07:19 PM
7
07
19
PM
PDT}

If it isn’t unchangeable, it isn’t truth. As I understand it, you don’t believe that such things exist or that we can know them. That makes you a skeptic.
Then I'm a skeptic. I threaten America. I crumble the culture. I don't mind the mindless tyranny of moral relativism. I vulgarize all that was once beautiful. See that beautiful thing over there? I make it vulgar just like that by thought alone. I have gained control of almost every major institution in the country. In those institutions, I create new skeptics. I propagate skeptical children. These my skeptical children and I, we make up morality. as we go along. We threaten America. We crumble the culture.David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
06:59 PM
6
06
59
PM
PDT}

StephenB, you've "had your career threatened by politically correct goons who will stop at nothing to ruin your name because you didn’t cotton to their arbitrary world view"? Really? Were they twirling their mustaches as well? I very much enjoyed how you could follow "Every argument should stand on its own" with "As a citizen of the United States, I am watching my culture crumble because the mindless tyranny of moral relativism has gained control of almost every major institution in the country, vulgarizing all that was once beautiful and creating a whole new set of skeptics" yadda yadda. I don't know about your career, but your writing should be threatened by the cliché police.David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
06:46 PM
6
06
46
PM
PDT}

Hazel (#576) Thank you once again for getting to the nub of the matter. You quote my earlier remark:
For the point I’m making is a simple one: notwithstanding the fact that the sun has risen every morning for the past 4.54 billion years, we have no reason to believe that it will rise tomorrow, if we reject belief in God.
and you comment:
The fact that it has risen day after day for centuries doesn't count as a reason?
No, it doesn't. I can see I've failed to make this clear because I had a mathematical illustration in mind while I was writing, so I'd like to share it with you. OK, let's plot a graph on the xy-axis. The horizontal x-axis represents what day it is. x = 1 represents the Earth's first day, 4.54 billion years ago. On the next day, x = 2. The Earth is 4.54 billion years old. According to my online calculator, 4.54 billion times 365.242199 (the exact number of days in a year) equals more than 1.6 trillion days - in fact, it's 1,658,199,583,460. (Actually, the Earth's rotation was somewhat faster in the past, but for simplicity's sake, we'll ignore this complication.) The y-axis on our graph represents the time of day at which the sun has risen. So if the sun rises at 6 a.m. then y = 6. Now, let's be extremely generous to the believer in nature's reliability. Let's assume that the sun has risen day after day, for the past 4.54 billion years at EXACTLY 6 o'clock. Let's also ignore clouds, volcanic eruptions and other events which might block out the sun. So this morning, x had a value of 1,658,199,583,460 and y had a value of ... 6! What a surprise! So here's my question. What value should we rationally assume y will have tomorrow morning, when x = 1,658,199,583,461? You say it's 6. I say: anything but 6 would be a far better bet. Why? Here's why. There is an infinite number of mathematical functions that go through all the points we've graphed so far. There are infinitely many mathematical functions which follow a smooth straight trajectory through all the 6's and then suddenly take off and soar upwards, at varying angles to the horizontal - 30 degrees, 45 degrees, 60 degrees or what have you. There are also infinitely many which plunge downwards at varying angles, and infinitely many which do even crazier things like oscillate, jump, skip the next few values of x (sorry folks, but sunrise has been canceled today!), and so on. But there is only ONE mathematical function which has the value y = 6, day after day. Think of that. ONE ... against infinity. Now I'll repeat my question: if you were a betting person, what should you bet the next value will be? Well, it would certainly help if we knew what was generating this mathematical function. Suppose we find out that all the dots to date have actually been randomly generated. After we've picked our jaws up from the floor - "What! You mean we've just been lucky, 1.6 trillion times??" - we are invited to place our bets. I'm sure you've heard of the gambler's fallacy. Just because you've been lucky (or unlucky) in the past, doesn't mean you'll be lucky again. Recognizing this point, we decide to bet against the next value of y being 6. Probably the sun won't rise at 6 tomorrow, after all. But wait. There's another possibility. We're informed that all the values we've observed have been generated by a giant cosmic computer program. Immediately, we start cheering. "Good old computers! So rational, solid ... and RELIABLE! Of course we'll bet on the next value being six!" But there's a snag. All our computer programs have a human programmer. But this one didn't - in fact, it programmed us! What's more, we're told it's completely lacking in consciousness. It's not an agent and it doesn't care a fig about us. It can't care. It just is. It operates according to fixed, immutable principles, a.k.a. the laws of nature. Nervously, we reconsider. "Well, it's a bit disconcerting. Still, it's been 6 every time, so whatever program it's running, it makes sense to bet it'll be 6 again, doesn't it?" No, it doesn't. Let's go back to our mathematical example, with the upward and downward soaring curves. We have no idea what the next value of y will be. The program - whatever it is - could be a very nice one, and follow a simple set of Basic instructions: 0 Let x = 1 10 Let y = 6 20 Let x = x + 1 30 Goto 10 But there are infinitely many possible programs, and only a very tiny proportion generate the curve we would like. In betting on a value of y = 6 tomorrow, we are betting on the program's being the simplest and friendliest one we can imagine. How nice. And how anthropomorphic. Why should it be? We might want the program to be simple and predictable and friendly, but does the program want to be nice and simple and predictable. NO! It doesn't want. Period. OK, so there's a program but there's no programmer. And the program could be ... just about anything. As this depressing realization sinks in, we decide that it would be better NOT to bet on the next value of y being 6, after all. We've seen that randomness can't be relied on, and necessity has failed us too. A necessary universe doesn't have to be a predictable one. And we get an additional jolt when we realize that our universe appears to have a finite duration. Obviously the program doesn't go back indefinitely into the past, so why should it continue indefinitely into the future? And why should it be 6 every day? There really is no reason for it to be. Interlude: NOW do you see why I am worried about the sky falling and the sun not rising tomorrow, Hazel? I MEAN IT. If there's no God, these things really could happen, for all we know. But then we get an update. Wait! We've been misinformed. There is a programmer, somehwere in the Great Beyond! And the programmer has been setting the value to 6 for the past 1.6 trillion days! Immediately we start cheering. "Good old Cosmic Programmer! So there is a God! And He/She has done the same thing, faithfully, for the past 1.6 trillion days! Come on, let's place our bets! What a nice person!" "Not so fast!" says Hazel. "This God is willful! God as a willful being could cause the sun to stand still! We don't know what this God is like! Why should we trust such a whimsical Deity?" Some people in our group loudly disagree. "Look. God's done the same thing for 1.6 trillion days. That's a pretty good track record! Why shouldn't we trust God?" "Yes, but this God of yours has caused children to die and crops to fail, and has allowed holocausts to happen! Some God!" retort others in the group. "True," reply the believers, "but let's give credit where credit's due. Bad things have happened, but God has never failed to make the sun rise. And there are lots of other regularities we've found too ... there are dozens of these laws! And God has kept them for every single one of the past 1.6 trillion days! Remember, folks, we're not discussing theodicies here! We're betting on the next value of y! What time will the sun rise tomorrow? Surely it's got to be six!" "Wait!" says Hazel. "I have a counter-argument. There are infinitely many possible deities, with infinitely many reasons for not wanting the sun to rise tomorrow. Maybe God's an alcoholic, and He/She wants to sleep in tomorrow morning. The number of possible deities that don't keep their promise tomorrow far exceeds the number that do, so it's rational to bet that ours won't, either." Hazel is right. If God were like the Wizard of Oz, then there'd be no reason to trust such a Deity. A Supreme Being might not be a very nice being. "I have an idea!" says vj. "Let's reason backwards. Suppose the next value of y is going to be 6. Really, we don't have any choice but to suppose that. How are we going to sow our crops otherwise? But we've got a Deity problem. Let's ask ourselves this question: what kind of Deity would we require to guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow?" The group falls silent. At last someone pipes up: "One that cannot fail to keep a promise. It would make sense to trust a Deity like that." "But what's to stop it?" Hazel objects. "It's the Supreme Being! It can do anything it likes, including turn us into spaghetti!" "Nothing limits it, but it still has its own nature," vj responds. "Perhaps this is the Deity we're looking for. Who's to say it's capable of wanting to turn us into spaghetti? Wouldn't a Being that could want to do that be defective, rather than perfect? For my part, I'd consider it to be a psychopath. I'd pity such a mediocre Deity." "But what keeps it faithful?" Hazel asks. "Perhaps it's a Being that can't stop loving. Perhaps loving is what it does. Perhaps loving is all it does - that and understanding what it loves. Perhaps that's how it made the cosmos in the first place. Maybe it literally loved us into existence. An essentially loving Deity could not go off the rails, or it would be no longer be itself. It would cease to exist, and it can't do that." Hazel is still dubious. "Now I know how religions get started!" she declares. And sociologically, she's right, of course. "But think about it," vj urges. "I have no way of showing that the notion of essentially loving deity makes sense, but no-one can show it doesn't. If there is one, it would explain the recurring pattern of sunrises we've seen, and it would justify our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. For the big advantage of a personal Deity is this: it's something we can trust. You can't trust chance, and you can't trust blind necessity. A programmerless program waon't get you anywhere. Even a bad personal Deity might behave itself sometimes, but a necessarily perfect one lets us sleep at night." "But you're projecting!" protests Hazel. "Have you got a better explanation for the sun rising? And have you got one that'll let the farmers sleep at night - not to mention the scientists who observe the heavens?" counters vj. "Well, in that case, I'm turning it in. Good night!" That's about as fair as I can make it.vjtorley_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
06:42 PM
6
06
42
PM
PDT}

----Hazel: (answering if she reasoned her way to any universal, objective truth") I haven’t, and I don’t think we (human beings in general) can. You already knew that, so why did you ask? Because in your previous post, as a defense agaist the proposition that you are a skeptic, wrote, "I believe there is truth toward which reason can strive, so I don’t think Stephen is talking about me." I think we can find some truths, although I think they will always be provisional to some degree." Now you write, ----"You must be using the word truth differently than I am. What do you call something like the statement “the earth has a solid inner core”? Is this not a provisional truth: we have a great deal of evidence to support this conclusion, but this core has never been observed, so future observation might change our understanding." Truth is unchangeable. Scientific facts are, at best, a kind of low level truth, but they don't qualify as universal, objective, unchangeable truth. If it isn't unchangeable, it isn't truth. As I understand it, you don't believe that such things exist or that we can know them. That makes you a skeptic.StephenB_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
06:39 PM
6
06
39
PM
PDT}

----David Kellogg: "I get attacked here not “for embracing Christianity” but for not embracing a particular version of it. Further, unless StephenB is your name in the phone book and on your office door, you are full of hot air. I understand the reasons for anonymity, and I support the option, but the fact is that you are posting anonymously on a blog that supports your views, while I am posting a distinctly oppositional psoition using my real name." You didn't get attacked for believing in Christianity. You were challenged about the consistency of your world view, which is very, very questionable. I have given my real name more that once on this blog, and I hold myself accoutable for everything that I say. I use the psuedo name because I prefer not to show off my credentials or my advanced degrees. Every argument should stand on its own, and I don't use agency power to boost my credibility. As a citizen of the United States, I am watching my culture crumble because the mindless tyranny of moral relativism has gained control of almost every major institution in the country, vulgarizing all that was once beautiful and creating a whole new set of skeptics who have been trained to believe that truth doesn't exists, that God doesn't grant natural rights, and that morality is something you make up as you go along. So when skeptics come here to ply their trade, they find me waiting. I want the good people who visit this blog for information to know that subjectivism, skepticism, and moral relativism are poison for the mind, deadly for a culture, and yes, irrational. As the passage goes, "We hold these truths to be SELF EVIDENT......"all men are created equal and ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS." That is where freedom comes from, and anyone who doesn't believe it is freedom's enemy. ----"Any “heat” you get is limited to this blog; nothing you say here will have any consequences for your outside life, which is inaccessible from here. The same cannot be said of me. You get to mouth off at will on this blog with no chance of being held accountable. That’s your right, and I support it. But you have not taken the slightest risk in doing so." You don't know the meaning of the word "heat" until you have your career threatened by politically correct goons who will stop at nothing to ruin your name because you didn't cotton to their arbitrary world view. Stephen BussellStephenB_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
06:24 PM
6
06
24
PM
PDT}

VJ:
With the greatest respect, I suggest that you read my posts a little more carefully...Now compare this with what I wrote way back in post #112, on the subject of certainty...Is this what you call a "full retreat"??!!
You're right. I see that your position has been much more nuanced than my characterization. I should have, but did not, read all of your contributions before characterizing them. Some were penned before I tuned in; others I have skimmed due to their length. BTW, vis your remark in 112 on certainty, you might enjoy the slender Wittgenstein volume entitled, appropriately enough, "On Certainty." You do assert that you regard your position as "beyond reasonable doubt," if not certain and incontrovertible. You then continued,
Our law courts operate with a concept of “certain beyond reasonable doubt.” So my question is: why should we not invoke a similar standard of evidence in matters pertaining to religious belief?
What this forgets is that in courts of law it is the jury, not the prosecuting and defense attorneys, who decide whether the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt has been met. I find many of the doubts expressed regarding the validity of your arguments reasonable. Review of the history of the cosmological argument discloses centuries of similar sparing, with very smart people advocating both sides of the discussion. The most reasonable conclusion (to stretch the metaphor) is that, with respect to your arguments, examinations continue and the trial is ongoing.
Let me be clear: mere preferences have nothing to do with my opting for theism.
Nothing? I find that difficult to believe.
My decision is prompted by something far more basic than that: a striving for sanity. The logical consequences of disbelief in God are that the laws of nature could break down at any moment, that our rational deliberations are not free, and our rational deliberations are not trustworthy, except when they pertain to purely practical matters. Believing all that would be enough to drive any normal person round the twist, as I have repeatedly stated on this thread...the point I’m making is a simple one: notwithstanding the fact that the sun has risen every morning for the past 4.54 billion years, we have no reason to believe that it will rise tomorrow, if we reject belief in God.
I find this sort of passage surpassing strange, particularly in light of your observations regarding certainty and standards for justification of belief ("beyond a reasonable doubt"). There are several assertions here that deserve to be considered individually. Here I'll address a few: First the sun. Above you articulated a standard of "no reasonable doubt" (rather than certainty) with respect to your putative proofs of the existence of God. Simultaneously, you argue that absent a belief in God there is no rational reason to believe the sun will rise tomorrow morning. Yet upon applying your standard of rationality and certainty vis confidence in your proofs of the existence of God ("beyond reasonable doubt"), it is fully rational to expect the sun to rise tomorrow and quite irrational to expect otherwise, for the simple reason that we have observed (and inferred) that the sun has risen the last one trillion, six hundred forty two billion, five hundred million mornings, without exception. Given this simple fact, confidence that it will rise tomorrow morning is absolutely rational and warranted, to a degree that far exceeds the justification required for a courtroom verdict. Is it an absolute certainty that it will rise tomorrow, or proof of same? Of course not (indeed there are good reasons to believe that in another trillion mornings or so it won't). Nevertheless, it is ridiculous to assert that atheists and agnostics should quail with anxiety over the matter. Your earlier, similar assertion is likewise unwarranted, for similar reasons:
If I were an atheist, I’d be constantly expecting my mind, and/or the world, to break down at any moment. After all, what’s to stop either of them from doing so? The appeal of belief in a Personal, Self-Sufficient Agent who maintains the world in existence is that it lays these metaphysical anxieties to rest.
I would argue that, absent a belief in God but mindful of the regularities evident in both my own mental functioning and the world around me, it would in fact be irrational to quake with anxiety over the possibility that natural laws may be repealed at any moment. Formal doubt (sometimes called "philosopher's doubt") may be sustained, but not "reasonable doubt" associated with rationality and rational behavior. Given that, and given the fact that your arguments for the existence of God purportedly meet (only) the same standard (no reasonable doubt), I don't see that belief in God, having met a standard of justification no higher than that which undergirds my agnostic confidence in the day to day persistence of the world, adds to one's security in this matter. And from the perspective of psychological realism I find your assertion more than a little weird. As an aside, I find contradiction between the assurance you derive from knowledge that God sustains the world, and the assertions made up-thread (by Stephen?) regarding the putative necessary consequences of unchanging law version personal agency prior to the advent of the universe. If I understand those assertions correctly, it was maintained that only a necessary, timeless first cause possessed of agency is capable of doing something different (issue the universe), whereas unchanging personal laws are incapable of issuing changing effects. Yet more immediately above you are asserting that were the universe governed by impersonal laws only, the world is liable to fly apart or cease to be at any second - physical laws repealed and the strong force no longer with us - and you derive assurance in a universe governed by agency. I'd say the reverse seem as likely: it is agency, not impersonal law, that is capable of capriciousness. I'll place a bookmark there. More anon.Diffaxial_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
06:21 PM
6
06
21
PM
PDT}

Stephen asks,
Hazel, what universal, objective truth have you reached throught the use of reason that applies to all people, at all times, and at all places. You should be able to identify them if that is the case.
I haven’t, and I don’t think we (human beings in general) can. You already knew that, so why did you ask? (And let’s not go off on logic again - I’ve explained what kind of truth I think logic has, and the last time I did iyou told me you didn’t want to be lectured.)
How can a truth be provisional? If you can’t count on it, it isn’t true.
You must be using the word truth differently than I am. What do you call something like the statement “the earth has a solid inner core”? Is this not a provisional truth: we have a great deal of evidence to support this conclusion, but this core has never been observed, so future observation might change our understanding. If this isn’t some kind of truth, what word would you use to describe it?hazel_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
06:16 PM
6
06
16
PM
PDT}

----Hazel: "I believe that in theory there is some (probably) overall truth about the real and ultimate nature of reality (thinking of our universe as embedded perhaps in a larger reality), but not only do I not think we can find truths about what is outside of the universe we live in, I don’t believe there is any entity that knows that ultimate truth. The truth is there in the reality of what is, but there isn’t someone knowing that truth. Knowledge is something we human beings extract from our experience in order to manage the totality of that experience, and our need to act within the world, but the world itself has no need for knowledge, because it is what it is." Hazel, what universal, objective truth have you reached throught the use of reason that applies to all people, at all times, and at all places. You should be able to identify them if that is the case. ----Hazel; "I believe there is truth toward which reason can strive, so I don’t think Stephen is talking about me. I think we can find some truths, although I think they will always be provisional to some degree." How can a truth be provisional? If you can't count on it, it isn't true. One of the first prerequisites for finding truth is to know what a truth is. In terms of classifying skeptics, I am talking about any nominalist who doesn't believe that the images in the mind can grasp corresponding universals outside the mind. That would be you, and David, and Diffaxial, and Mark.StephenB_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
05:50 PM
5
05
50
PM
PDT}

Cool, and thanks, both for the comment and for hanging in here with me and others. As I used to tell the kids I coached in basketball, you can't learn if you don't have teammates to play with, and you can't have a real game if you don't have another team to play against.hazel_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
05:48 PM
5
05
48
PM
PDT}

hazel, that is very nice indeed, even moving. Thank you for writing that.David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
05:28 PM
5
05
28
PM
PDT}

stephen writes,
In the final analysis, David, Diffaxial, Hazel, and Mark are Kantian skeptics. They do not believe that we can reason our way to truth, because they don’t believe there is any truth toward which reason can strive. So, naturally, it follows just as day follows night, that they will not believe that we can reason our way to God. They propose a journey without a destination. They don’t understand that their orientation to the life of the mind makes no sense, nevertheless, it makes no sense.
I believe there is truth toward which reason can strive, so I don’t think Stephen is talking about me. I think we can find some truths, although I think they will always be provisional to some degree. I also think we creatively create some truths for ourselves in order to give ourselves some structure which which to live with the mysteries of existence. In my opinion, one of the dilemmas of the human condition is that we can ask more questions than we can answer. I believe that in theory there is some (probably) overall truth about the real and ultimate nature of reality (thinking of our universe as embedded perhaps in a larger reality), but not only do I not think we can find truths about what is outside of the universe we live in, I don’t believe there is any entity that knows that ultimate truth. The truth is there in the reality of what is, but there isn’t someone knowing that truth. Knowledge is something we human beings extract from our experience in order to manage the totality of that experience, and our need to act within the world, but the world itself has no need for knowledge, because it is what it is. So I appreciate the human condition for its magnificent opportunity to know, and yet I am, humbly, I believe, aware of the limitations of knowledge. To Stephen, my perspective makes no sense, because I don’t believe in the God he does, and thus I don’t believe in the journey, and destination, that is central to his life. However, my perspective makes sense to me, and so does my journey. Because he can’t conceive of a viable perspective other than his own, or admit that his perspective might be one of many viable perspectives, he necessarily (oops, I used that word) sees me as irrational, living without purpose, and so on. But since I believe that I am quite rational person, living a life of considerable meaning and purpose - all without a belief in God - Stephen’s judgments carry very little weight.hazel_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
05:14 PM
5
05
14
PM
PDT}

Clive, that's cool; my apologies. I popped off over there in response to a pair of responses (not to yours individually). I'm finding it very hard to make myself understood, and as a result I'm saddened by the process. I do appreciate your attempt to continue the conversation. Sorry to drag you into my response to others. I'll try to say something about sehnsucht when I'm not in such a dark mood.David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
05:13 PM
5
05
13
PM
PDT}

StephenB [593], my position is not controversial? Are you serious? I get attacked here not "for embracing Christianity" but for not embracing a particular version of it. Further, unless StephenB is your name in the phone book and on your office door, you are full of hot air. I understand the reasons for anonymity, and I support the option, but the fact is that you are posting anonymously on a blog that supports your views, while I am posting a distinctly oppositional psoition using my real name. Any "heat" you get is limited to this blog; nothing you say here will have any consequences for your outside life, which is inaccessible from here. The same cannot be said of me. You get to mouth off at will on this blog with no chance of being held accountable. That's your right, and I support it. But you have not taken the slightest risk in doing so.David Kellogg_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
05:06 PM
5
05
06
PM
PDT}

Mark Frank You write:
Vjtorley #569 I think you have confused me with some other person. Most of what you write does not relate to anything I have written. For example, I have not made any comments about morality in this thread or accusing Koons of being slippery.
I do apologise. I was actually responding to the comments in #563 by David Kellogg. I don't know where I got the idea that you had written them. I guess my brain glitch was caused by writing in the wee hours of the morning. Again, my humble apologies for misattributing remarks to you.vjtorley_{April 16, 2009
April
04
Apr
16
16
2009
05:02 PM
5
05
02
PM
PDT}

Prev 1 … 3 4 5 6 7 … 25 Next