Disappointed with Shermer

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April 6, 2009

Intelligent Design

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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

Re #521 StephenB "What Prof Koons is trying to say is that surely we can all agree on the fact that something cannot come from nothing, since IF THAT ISN’T TRUE, no rationality is possible in the first place." Where does he say that? The closest I can find in the paper is where he says that the empirical evidence for the axiom is so great we should treat it as the default position.Mark Frank_{April 15, 2009
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I accept the rules of logic. I am sure we disagree about where they come from, but that disagreement is precisely the big topic that we are discussing. And if you don't want lectures you might try not giving them. And do you agree with my description of how logic works in conjunction with testable models to produce knowledge?hazel_{April 15, 2009
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I'd say this discussion has jumped the shark. Recognizing the scent of futility, wafting our way on the breeze of ad hominem assertions such as "it is generally a waste of time to ask my adversaries for a rational defense of anything" and "emotional investment in secularism results in reduced intellectual capacity," it's time to change the channel. (That wagon isn't so easy for Stephen.) Click.Diffaxial_{April 15, 2009
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----Hazel: "I have this vague feeling we’ve discussed this before: the laws of logic work within logical systems, but logical systems themselves don’t produce knowledge." Again, I don't want lectures. I want you to characterize, describe, or explain the rational foundations for logic. I you don't know, then just say so. I don't give people a hard time for saying that "don't know." I do, however, give people a hard time for pretending to know something that they don't.StephenB_{April 15, 2009
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----David Kellogg: "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in [evolution] a personal god, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)." ---Is that about right StephenB I would say that anyone who thinks that something can come from nothing is probably emotionally invested in secularism and, as a result, seriously reduced in their intellectual capacity. [Perhaps, in the spirit of political correcness, we might say, "rationally challenged."] Beyond that, I will leave the language of "ignorant," "stupid," "wicked," or "insane," to Darwinists like Dawkins, from whom your quote was generated, and whose anti-theistic, chance driven Darwinism, except for its honest expressions of atheism, is probably more attractive to you than any formulation ever devised by a theist.StephenB_{April 15, 2009
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I have this vague feeling we've discussed this before: the laws of logic work within logical systems, but logical systems themselves don't produce knowledge. To get knowledge about the world, you have to build a model whereby the components of the logical system represent observable components of the world, and then after you have reasoned about those components, you have to go back and test whether your logical conclusions actually match the world. If they don't, something is most likely wrong about the model (unless you actually made a logical mistake), and so you have to refine your model and try again. Logic is a tool for manipulating abstract concepts, but if the concepts don't accurately map the entities which they represent, you can have valid logic and yet no knowledge, or even meaning. Is there anything here you disagree with, Stephen?hazel_{April 15, 2009
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Please, let us avoid ad hominem statements. Mr StephenB has already admitted he has a private definition of rationality. No one should take offense if it doesn't include them.Nakashima_{April 15, 2009
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David Kellogg: As usual, you confuse rational conviction with irrational arrogance. I know it is generally a waste of time to ask my adversaries for a rational defense of anything, since the only thing they have to offer is an irrational defense for their misguided hyperskepticism but, in any case, here goes. Do you have anything at all substantive to say about the proposition that we reason our way FROM self evident truths, which is the substance of my rational conviction, or do you simply resent the fact that someone is willing to state without equivocation that which is obvious to all rational people?StephenB_{April 15, 2009
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Since we are discussing Koons' paper, I'd like to raise some points about his objections to a large (perhaps infinite) number of universes. Koons objects to a "junky cosmos" as bad science and against Occam's Razor. I don't see this to be the case. Stephen Wolfram argues strongly in "A New Kind Of Science" that there are some kind scientific discoveries that can only proceed by simulation. It is impossible to reason about the properties of a CA, you just have to run it. Indeed, in his exploration of all 256 1-dimensional CAs, he was doing exactly what Koons says is so unlikely - creating every possible universe (CA, in this case), running it forwards a certain number of time steps, and seeing if anything looked interesting. In this way he discovered Rule 110, which is a universal Turing machine. John Conway, in creating his famous CA the Game of Life, also had to experiment with the rules before arriving at the 'laws of nature' for that CA. Life (the CA) is a very fine tuned universe, and no one remembers all the other universes Conway created, then swept off his Go board when they weren't doing anything interesting. Edward Fredkin argues the same for our universe in his Digital Mechanics book. So if Koons would like to proceed by analogy to human creators, the human creators of universes with laws work by exhaustion and enumeration, creating many and keeping one. The junky cosmos starts to look 'reasonable'! :)Nakashima_{April 15, 2009
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I'm still carefully reading the papers. Meanwhile, we can create a shorter version of StephenB's claims by varying a well-known quote from Richard Dawkins:
It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in ~~evolution~~ a personal god, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).
StephenB, is that about right?David Kellogg_{April 15, 2009
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Preemptive rebuttal to haze: That you think StephenB has not cornered the market on reason shows that you have abandoned the reasoning process entirely. :-)David Kellogg_{April 15, 2009
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Stephen writes,
We dcn’t reason our way TO these things we reason our way FROM them. Any one who disputes the point cannnot reason his/her way through a paper bag, which explains most of the responses on this thread.
Your condescending, smug arrogance on these matters is not appreciated. You have not cornered the market on knowledge or the ability to reason. I don't know what you hope to gain by insulting those who disagree with you, but I can assure you that respect is not a likely result.hazel_{April 15, 2009
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Mr Vjtorley, Yes, my suggestion was arbitrary, though some would argue not implausible. It was offered for two purposes. One, to show that the formal argument was just a program like any computer program that depended completely on its inputs, and was susceptible to GIGO. Two, to show that the generalization by Koons in 5 has no basis at all. Koons says The fact that a set of facts has been ordered to some purpose is empirically verifiable and does not logically entail (although it may suggest) the existence of any personal intentionality. A teleological law is simply a projectible, empirical generalization, which can be used to explain a set of facts by reference to their common effects (not their causes). Teleological generalizations do not compete with or contradict causal laws: instead, they partly supervene on them (in the case of certain anthropic generalizations, they entirely supervene on causal laws). This supervenience of the teleological on the causal does not make the teleological reducible to the causal, nor any less real or less explanatory than the causal. For the sake of this argument, let us presume that we have discovered such teleological generalizations at the level of the cosmos, such as: all physical constants and Big Bang conditions are such as to make possible complex life forms. The cosmos, so characterized, is the effect of the First Cause. We attribute intelligence to human beings because of the teleological generalizations that characterize the actions of normal human beings. Since the effects of the First Cause are strongly analogous to the effects of human action in exactly this respect, we have the strongest possible reason for attributing to God something analogous to intelligence. Please excuse the long quote, but you can see for yourself in it that Koons, by phrases like "may suggest", "for the sake of argument", and "strongly analogous to" is most definitely not preparing the "strongest possible reason" to attribute what humans call intelligence to the imputed First Cause. As if there were a clear and agreed upon definition of intelligence. If our agrument about God is rooted in analogies from our own attributes, it is no wonder that God happens to be personal, intelligent, and have a mind it knows but others cannot. How very human of God! Of course, when Cthulhu reasons about God using the same procedure, God looks remarkably like Cthulhu.Nakashima_{April 15, 2009
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StephenB
Indeed, several of you are prepared NOT to accept the proposition that a thing cannot be both truth and false at the same time...
I agreed with this statement. I added that grammatically well formed propositions (which cannot be both true and false) can nevertheless present many obstacles to determining their truth value, the history of discussion surrounding "the present king of France is bald" providing a vivid example.Diffaxial_{April 15, 2009
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Correction of 518. I originally attributed the wrong quote to Diffaxial: However the same answer applies. ----Diffaxial to vjtorley: "But here you have completely abandoned the standard of putative “logical necessity” articulated above, and have instead chosen one model over the other in light of the supposed consequences of each model in the domain of personal freedom." No, it is intended as a good-will exercise of complete intellectual honesty in the face of an ideology, which embraces an iron clad “no concession policy.” In any case, the trade-offs indicated here is no surprise to those who take logic seriously. One cannot reason at all unless one assumes, AS GIVEN that certain truths already exist. I covered that much earlier and, of course, most of you ignored the point. Indeed, several of you are prepared NOT to accept the proposition that a thing cannot be both truth and false at the same time [and under the same formal circumstances unless someone can prove it to you, which of course cannot be done. We dcn’t reason our way TO these things we reason our way FROM them. Any one who disputes the point cannnot reason his/her way through a paper bag, which explains most of the responses on this thread.StephenB_{April 15, 2009
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----Mark Frank: "I don’t accept 6 and as far as I can see Prof. Koons is quite open that he does not offer a rigorous proof." What Prof Koons is trying to say is that surely we can all agree on the fact that something cannot come from nothing, since IF THAT ISN'T TRUE, no rationality is possible in the first place. Of course, Prof. Koons has not experienced some of the commentators on this thread.StephenB_{April 15, 2009
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Mr Mark Frank, Thank you for pointing out that Koons is open on this point and others to the lack of iron clad reasoning on his own part, and appeal to 'statistical' argumentation based on our own experience. Also, while he tries to answer objections based on quantum mechanics, he is silent on the relevance of special and general relativity, which is to me an amazing lacuna for someone presenting a 'cosmological' argument. What physics is wont to call a 'singularity' is exactly where common sense notions of time and cause break down. The Big Bang is such a singularity. Applying reasoning based on a time dimension to the singularity is applying a model outside its area of applicability, like applying the argument of CS Lewis quoted above to photons. Nothing causes a photon to move. It moves by definition. You ask if this is the longest thread on UD. My own experience here is limited, but the "Simulation Wars" thread is longer, I think. But this thread is a great example of civil discourse in the face of disagreement. Thank you to everyone for the human kindness and respect being shown all around! :)Nakashima_{April 15, 2009
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519 Last paragraph "the trade off indicated"StephenB_{April 15, 2009
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----Diffaxial to vjtorley: "This is just intended as a springboard to get the discussion going. Feel free to refine the notation and/or arguments as you wish." No, it is intended as a good-will exercise of complete intellectual honesty in the face of an ideology, which embraces an iron clad "no concession policy." In any case, the trade-offs indicated here is no surprise to those who take logic seriously. One cannot reason at all unless one assumes, AS GIVEN that certain truths already exist. I covered that much earlier and, of course, most of you ignored the point. Indeed, several of you are prepared NOT to accept the proposition that a thing cannot be both truth and false at the same time [and under the same formal circumstances unless someone can prove it to you, which of course cannot be done. We dcn't reason our way TO these things we reason our way FROM them. Any one who disputes the point cannnot reason his/her way through a paper bag, which explains most of the responses on this thread.StephenB_{April 15, 2009
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Re #515 Is this the most comments for single post on UD? You write: assumed that we were all agreed about the existence of some sort of timeless cause of the cosmos, but not about the question of what this timeless cause might be. If you want a rigorous proof of 6., you can find it in Koons’ article at http://www.arn.org/docs/koons/cosmo.pdf . Professor Koons puts it far better than I could. I don't accept 6 and as far as I can see Prof. Koons is quite open that he does not offer a rigorous proof. The best he can offer is excellent empirical evidence that justifies accepting "every non-necessary effect has a cause" as the default position. I am not convinced that there is such strong empirical evidence. Is there a cause for the emission of a radioactive particle at a particular moment? Even if there is empirical evidence, the big bang is so strange and extreme that we cannot assume that what we commonly observe of events around us also applies to this event. Modern physics has routinely shown that assumptions founded on what we observe from day to day in our own scale of time and space may not apply to extremes.Mark Frank_{April 15, 2009
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Vjtorley:
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.
But here you have completely abandoned the standard of putative "logical necessity" articulated above, and have instead chosen one model over the other in light of the supposed consequences of each model in the domain of personal freedom. This is a tacit admission that there is at least one other model that is logically permissible (why not more?), demonstrating that the claim of logical necessity for your original model is a mistaken claim. It also suggests that you are advocating one model over the other not because it is demonstrably true, but because it has consequences you prefer.Diffaxial_{April 15, 2009
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Mr. Nakashima
While I have excepted myself a few times from the discussion, my early participation was exactly a disagreement with the assumption in 6.
Premise 6. was as follows: 6. ($y)(Cya & Oya & -Qy) (our universe had a timeless cause which is wholly distinct from it). I assumed that we were all agreed about the existence of some sort of timeless cause of the cosmos, but not about the question of what this timeless cause might be. If you want a rigorous proof of 6., you can find it in Koons' article at http://www.arn.org/docs/koons/cosmo.pdf . Professor Koons puts it far better than I could. Hazel
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.
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. Meanwhile, I'll try to re-formulate my earlier transcendental argument for God's personal agency (simplified from Bernard Lonergan's key insight that the universe is intelligible) in mathematically rigorous logical notation, but that'll take a bit of time.vjtorley_{April 14, 2009
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David Kellogg I'm glad to hear that you're following up the cosmological argument. Graham Oppy is perhaps the leading contemporary critic of this argument. You might also like to have a look at "Defeasible Reasoning, Special Pleading and the Cosmological Argument" by Robert Koons, at http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/docs/defeasible.html . In this article, Koons replies to Oppy's criticisms of his argument. If you need to do a bit of background reading on the cosmological argument, then I'd suggest this site: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/menus/lecture.html Mr. Nakashima You constructed a rival argument, as follows. Instead of 1. (^x)(Tx -> ($y)(Cyx & Iy & Oyx)). (Every individual with specified teleological properties has an intelligent cause which is distinct from it.) you suggested 1'. (^x)(Tx -> ($y)(Cyx & I'y & Oyx)). (Every individual with specified teleological properties has an intelligent, sadistic cause which is distinct from it, where I'y means y is intelligent and sadistic.) This yielded a conclusion Thus 3'. ($y)(Cya & Iy & Oya) (There exists a cause of our spatio-temporal universe which is intelligent and sadistic and distinct from it.) The problem with this counterargument is that 1' is not even remotely plausible. It imakes sense to believe that an object with specific teleological properties has an intelligent cause, but why would you want to say that cause was sadistic? You might as well say it was green with purple spots. It's an ad hoc complication. Hazel: I see that you query premise 9: 9. M(^x)(^y)((-Px & -Qx & Cxy) -> -Qy) (Necessarily, if an impersonal individual with no temporal beginning causes an effect, that effect also has no temporal beginning.) I think I now understand where you are coming from. You are saying that time is a subjective illusion on our part, and that what appears to be a flow of discrete, successive events which are separate from the underlying laws that explain them is in fact nothing but the necessary unfolding of a program embodied in the cosmos itself. Hence the problem of why things have a beginning in time is a pseudo-problem: the underlying laws are indeed a sufficient cause for their existence, but they only appear at a particular stage in the program. The program itself may be envisaged as endless or as cyclic. The important thing is that events are pre-programmed, and that time is a subjective illusion. Now, your view is an old and respected one. You could even give it an Einsteinian twist, if you like. There's just one small problem with this view: you have no freedom.vjtorley_{April 14, 2009
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FYI, I'm reading Koons carefully, as well as a similar argument by Gale and Pruss ("A New Cosmological Argument.” Religious Studies 35 (1999), 461–76), and a recent argument against such views (Graham Oppy, "Cosmological Arguments," Nous 43:1 (2009) 31–48). StephenB's declaration notwithstanding, the fat lady has yet to sing: I want to take some time to assess these arguments in what appear to be their most rigorous contemporary form.David Kellogg_{April 14, 2009
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Clive:
Oh I see, you brought in an illustration to show us that all illustrations are wrong, or at least, cannot be known.
I described a proposition similar to that proffered by StephenB that has definitional (and tautological) status similar to his. It is similarly, in principle, not amenable to observational test. I requested some means to decide which of these propositions is to be preferred, but to date I've received one obviously defective response ("entropy"). I offer it to underscore the fact that propositions of this kind, because undecidable (regardless of logical manipulation), yield no real knowledge.
This is tantamount to saying that the unknown cannot be known.
That doesn't follow. There are many unknowns that may ultimately be known. The community of scientists, for example, has devised powerful means of rendering certain classes of the unknown known, and standards of provisional justification for those knowledge claims, standards that typically include the use of replicable observation. However, I do believe that unknowns of the class we are discussing will remain unknown, at least by the means we have been discussing. This is why I identified myself as "agnostic" in my first post.Diffaxial_{April 14, 2009
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Mr Vjtorley, Thank you for that translation of the argument. While I have excepted myself a few times from the discussion, my early participation was exactly a disagreement with the assumption in 6. I'm also suspect of Premise 1, as it strikes me as far too much assuming what we would like to prove. As well, all the objections to the reasonableness of applying categories that we barely understand inside the universe to any entity outside the universe, which have been raised previously. Did someone say 'brute logic proves nothing'? Let Ix denote: x is intelligent. Let me substitute Let Ix denote: If x is Human, x is intelligent, if x is not Human, x is sadistic. The conclusion now reads Thus 3. ($y)(Cya & Iy & Oya) (There exists a cause of our spatio-temporal universe which is intelligent and human or sadistic and distinct from it.) Are we still happy? What other things besides humans can be makers of objects with specific teleological properties? Are they all "intelligent"? The generalization of 5 makes it clear that our vision of God is created by looking in the mirror first. Yes, by Mr StephenB's definitions given earlier I am some brand of monist, but willing to revise given evidence to the contrary.Nakashima_{April 14, 2009
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And furthermore, my guess, which I have stated I think, is that whatever this uncaused cause is, the personal/impersonal dichotomy arises from it but is not central to it. But I'm a Taoist, so what do I know? :) (Not really - I just like the philosophy.)hazel_{April 14, 2009
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vj writes,
(Necessarily, if an impersonal individual with no temporal beginning causes an effect, that effect also has no temporal beginning.)
Writing this in logical symbolism makes it no less an unwarranted problem. 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. Wrapping it all up in symbolic logic does not get around the central flaw in all these formulations.hazel_{April 14, 2009
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StephenB:
Diffaxial: vjtorley just played a symphony at 498 and 501, the concert is over.
The first measure of that work:
Assumption: Every individual with specified teleological properties has an intelligent cause which is distinct from it.
Starting with an assumption that utters a significant portion of your conclusion doesn't promise a compelling composition.Diffaxial_{April 14, 2009
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StephenB [505], vjtorley's translation into more rigorous terms is impressive. That "the concert is over," however, is not necessarily true. Recall that you were mightily pleased with your own far less rigorous formulations earlier.David Kellogg_{April 14, 2009
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