At Mind Matters News: 5. Egnor, Dillahunty dispute the basic causes behind the universe

_{Denyse O'Leary

September 28, 2021

Atheism, Big Bang, Intelligent Design, theism}

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In a peppery exchange, Egnor argues that proofs of God’s existence follow the same logical structure as proofs in science:

At this point in the “Does God exist?” debate between theist neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and atheist broadcaster Matt Dillahunty (September 17, 2021), readers may recall that the debate opened with Egnor explaining why, as former atheist, he became a theist. Then Dillahunty explained why, as a former theist, he became an atheist. Michael Egnor then made his opening argument, offering ten proofs for the existence of God. Matt Dillahunty responded in his own opening argument that theaw propositions were all unfalsifiable. When, in Section 4, it was Egnor’s turn to rebut Dillahunty, Dillahunty was not easily able to recall Aquinas’s First Way (the first logical argument for the existence of God).
No matter, they agreed to keep talking. The conversation continues to be somewhat rambunctious, thus has been condensed for print:
News, “5. Egnor, Dillahunty dispute the basic causes behind the universe” at Mind Matters News

Michael Egnor: Well, again, singularities are supernatural. They are not natural.

Matt Dillahunty: I would argue that the singularity as described is natural. It is the entirety of the natural universe. [00:57:00]

Michael Egnor: All right, then what is a singularity? If you’re saying it’s natural, what is it?

Matt Dillahunty: So first of all, you’re not talking to a cosmologist, but the-

Michael Egnor: Then why do you say it’s natural? …

[Things became quite heated at this point.]

Matt Dillahunty: [00:58:00] I’ve tried to answer it, every time I open my … Say one more [bleep]…

Next: Is Matt Dillahunty using science as a crutch for his atheism? That’s Egnor’s accusation. Stay tuned.

The debate to date:

Debate: Former atheist neurosurgeon vs. former Christian activist. At Theology Unleashed, each gets a chance to state his case and interrogate the other. In a lively debate at Theology Unleashed, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and broadcaster Matt Dillahunty clash over the existence of God.
A neurosurgeon’s ten proofs for the existence of God. First, how did a medic, formerly an atheist, who cuts open people’s brains for a living, come to be sure there is irrefutable proof for God? In a lively debate at Theology Unleashed, Michael Egnor and Matt Dillahunty clash over “Does God exist?” Egnor starts off.
Atheist Dillahunty spots fallacies in Christian Egnor’s views. “My position is that it’s unacceptable to believe something if the available evidence does not support it.” Dillahunty: We can’t conclusively disprove an unfalsifiable proposition. And that is what most “God” definitions, at least as far as I can tell, are.

4. Egnor now tries to find out what Dillahunty actually knows… About philosophical arguments for the existence of God, as he begins a rebuttal. Atheist Dillahunty appears unable to recall the philosophical arguments for God’s existence, which poses a challenge for Egnor in rebutting him.

You may also wish to read:

Atheist spokesman Matt Dillahunty refuses to debate me again Although he has said that he finds debates “incredibly valuable,” he is — despite much urging — making an exception in this case. Why? For millennia, theists have thought meticulously about God’s existence. New Atheists merely deny any need to make a case. That’s partly why I dumped atheism. (Michael Egnor)

Comments

#83 ET on Racette ET:
He goes on to wrongly state:
(On the other hand, it does seem to me that Meyer would be more consistent if he argued that, since every instance of encoded information of which we’re aware is actually man-made, DNA must also be man-made. But that would be an even more absurd argument.)
That doesn’t follow at all. If we know that it couldn’t be man-made we infer it was some other intelligent agency.
Exactly. Racette labours under the assumption that human intelligence exhausts intelligence, otherwise his writing doesn't make any sense.Origenes on vacation_{October 2, 2021
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The question is, “Was there an intelligence that created the DNA system?” Proposition: only two possibilities could have produced the DNA system, natural processes or an intelligence. Proposition: natural process do not have the capability to produce the DNA system. Therefore, the DNA system was produced by an intelligence. It certainly couldn’t have been humans. Could another intelligence besides humans have existed in the past that created the DNA system? There must have since humans could not have done it This is not circular. The onus is on Racette to suggest what could have produced life since natural causes are not a possibility.jerry_{October 2, 2021
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General question: Whatever you think and believe, and whatever you believe about the powers of your own intelligence... How do you know you're not being misled on purpose?ram_{October 2, 2021
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Racette's argument is flawed:
But wait. That is – at best – a circular argument. If we include DNA in our initial inventory of “functional” information, then it’s no longer our uniform and repeated experience that such information is the product of intelligence. Rather, it’s our uniform and repeated experience that man-made encoding of information is man-made. That says nothing about not-man-made encoding of information.
1- It isn't circular to rely on our knowledge of cause and effect relationships 2- Instead of 100% uniformity we have 99.9999% uniformity with respect to coded information processing systems 3- There isn't any evidence for any not-intelligent-agency-made coded information processing systems One issue is Racette seems to not know about the "Signature in the Cell". The entire book pertained to the argument about DNA and the genetic code being evidence for ID. He goes on to wrongly state:
(On the other hand, it does seem to me that Meyer would be more consistent if he argued that, since every instance of encoded information of which we’re aware is actually man-made, DNA must also be man-made. But that would be an even more absurd argument.)
That doesn't follow at all. If we know that it couldn't be man-made we infer it was some other intelligent agency.
Instances of functional information storage in DNA both predate and outnumber every form which we can trace to an intelligent source – that is, every form which was created by man. Our actual experience is that every cell in every organism contains a vast amount of structured, functional information for which we can identify no creating intelligence. There is no basis, therefore, for his oft-repeated claim that, in our consistent experience, such storage is an artifact of intelligence, and the fact that he continues to repeat the claim strikes me as peculiar.
Your understanding is peculiar. That functional information storage only exists in and comes from life. We can identify life. Biology exists because we can study life. There aren't any instances of functional information storage absent LIFE. Therefore there is plenty of basis, reasoning, logic and rational that such storage is an artifact of intelligence. Everywhere we see it we see intelligence in the form of LIFE. The two are inseparable. And I gravitate to that which can be supported with evidence.ET_{October 2, 2021
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Oh my, what do you think you get here? This sometimes seems like confirmation bias Grand Central Station! Everyone gravitates towards viewpoints similar to one's own, but some people are a lot better about holding their ideas more provisionally, being able to assess new information, and at least comprehending other viewpoints. And some, not so much. And if confirmation bias was what I was looking for, I wouldn't be here, would I?Viola Lee_{October 2, 2021
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Viola Lee in line with my own thoughts
:))) Oh, dear! Confirmation bias in the Wonderland of darwinism.Hanks_{October 2, 2021
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Sorry I feel like I’m extremely late to this, but just observing the previous comments (discussion maybe?) I agree partly with viola lee that maybe a more on topic discussion would help all sides get there point across. With that said however, I have to ask viola lee if she could state her side of the argument and why she feels that she wasn’t getting a favourable response here on UD , but felt a more agreeable position on pandas thumb?Seekers_{October 2, 2021
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Hmmm. Someone pointed out to me that The Panda's Thumb also has a thread about Racette's article which Racette himself has joined in on a bit. I also see that this thread was mentioned in a comment, and notes that my post has gotten "lots of unhappy responses." :-) I also notice that one of the comments highlights the same point I did. All interesting, and it was nice to see responses more in line with my own thoughts over there. LinkViola Lee_{October 2, 2021
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1. We are aware of numerous examples of the encoding of “functional” information in a structured form, from computer programs to grammars to all sorts of artificial symbolic schemes. 2. Our experience with all of these is that they are the product of intelligence. Specifically, they are the product of human intelligence. 3. It is, therefore, our uniform and repeated experience that such encoding is the product of intelligence. 4.But we are also aware of the encoding of “functional” information in a structured form in the DNA that is found in each of our cells. It follows, therefore, that this information too must be the product of intelligence, since it is our universal and repeated experience that all such information is the product of intelligence.
1.We produce functional information therefore we know what it looks like . 2. We studied living cells and suddenly our "functional information" looks like a bad joke compared with functional informations from cells. 3.Therefore : a)our intelligence looks like a bad joke compared to the intelligence that created life. b)our intelligence is the 2nd best intelligence in the universe after the blind chance therefore blind chance is another synonym for intelligence. :)Hanks_{October 2, 2021
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As regards #78: David, you wrote: "Not to side-track the discussion, but I think AD hit on an interesting point. It’s interesting that intelligent, informed, sincere people can come to such different conclusions. Kind of unsettling actually. And to be clear, this side-track is not a criticizing or supporting anybody or any position. Just an interesting side point." I agree that it is sometimes unsettling, but I always appreciate it when people of even widely divergent views can discuss their differences in a civil and respectful way. To be frank, I'm not up on what ID people in general are saying. I read Meyer's book and have listened to him quite a lot, and I'm going to confine my comments to his own work. Sometimes he does mention the qualification you noted (in #73; and my earlier comment about that is awaiting moderation), and sometimes he doesn't. But I was thinking about that distinction, and whether it really matters (other than to avoid the accusation, which I leveled, of it being a circular argument). Suppose I made this analogous claim: "Everything that orbits the Earth and for which we can identify an agent responsible for it being there was placed in orbit by an intelligent actor. We should therefore suspect that our moon was also placed in orbit by an intelligent actor." How would that compare to Meyer's claim? To the best of my knowledge, we don't actually *know* how the moon was established in its orbit; we can't rule out, based on observation or evidence, the hypothesis that it might have been placed there by an intelligent actor, just like everything we have placed in orbit about our planet. It seems to me that there are all sorts of things about which analogous claims could be made: lakes, piles of stone, holes in the ground, things in orbit, nuclear reactions... and mechanisms for the storage, processing, and replication of encoded information. These things differ in terms of how confident we are about our understanding of the processes that bring each about *when humans are not the agents involved*. But I would suggest that they don't differ in kind, and that this fact doesn't change when we explain that sometime we know, and sometimes we don't know, that there was an intelligence behind it. I hope that was clear. My point is that I don't think the qualifier "where we know the source" is important -- other than, again, to avoid that accusation of circularity. (And I'm willing to forgive Meyer the sloppiness on those occasions when he omits the qualifier, but I'm not willing to credit his claim with logical consistency.)Hank Racette_{October 2, 2021
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I didn't mean to imply the Racette was using "unguided forces" in his argument. I think his claim is that ID proponents argue that all functional information is from intelligence. He seems to be claiming that as a starting point for ID. It's definitely not a starting point. At most, it's a reasonable conclusion based on the the fact that all instances of functional information, where we know the source, have been found to be from intelligence. I think he's arguing against a strawman at best. I don't doubt that he sincerely believes that ID proponents start with the conclusion, but that isn't a valid conclusion based on the actual ID argument. At least that's my take on it. Not to side-track the discussion, but I think AD hit on an interesting point. It's interesting that intelligent, informed, sincere people can come to such different conclusions. Kind of unsettling actually. And to be clear, this side-track is not a criticizing or supporting anybody or any position. Just an interesting side point.davidl1_{October 2, 2021
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I don't believe that Racette says anything about contrasting intelligent design with "unguided forces" as a source for the information. He may very well personally believe that God is the source of the information. (He is a fairly strong conservative political commentor, FWIW.) What he is claiming is that Meyer's argument is a bad argument. That doesn't mean he is arguing for "unguided forces."Viola Lee_{October 2, 2021
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DavidL1, exactly. VL, Seems like Racette's position is a preference for you. Why is that?AnimatedDust_{October 2, 2021
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The way I read it, Racette is claiming that ID proponents claim that functional information is always an artifact of intelligence, and that the claim is question begging. The actual claim of ID proponents is that when we know the source it's always intelligence. Since that's the case, and since we know of one (and so far only one) source of functional information, intelligent design is more plausible than unguided forces as a source for the information. There's no question begging involved. Unrelated question on comments being posted. I was editing my comment until about 10 seconds before it was uneditable. Is the comment posted immediately, and still available for editing?davidl1_{October 2, 2021
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also re: 73 David, Meyer sometimes makes that distinction. It doesn't improve his argument, and it's even a bit disingenuous in that it skips the "and that intelligence is human" part, which would tend to water down the category generalization he is intending to make. That is, it's harder to generalize from a more specific example. Suppose, for instance, that he pointed out that "every instance of functionally encoded information that we can identify as having been created by Intel was created by an American corporation, ergo...." We'd recognize that as oddly and inappropriately specific, and not something from which we want to make a lot of generalizations about more broadly encoded information. He also routinely makes the argument without including the "for which we know the source" qualification. But, again, that qualification adds nothing to the strength of his argument, though it does remove the circularity.Hank Racette_{October 2, 2021
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re 73. That I think is the point Racette is making.Viola Lee_{October 2, 2021
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I'm late to the game, but this seems to be a mistake:
Instances of functional information storage in DNA both predate and outnumber every form which we can trace to an intelligent source – that is, every form which was created by man. Our actual experience is that every cell in every organism contains a vast amount of structured, functional information for which we can identify no creating intelligence. There is no basis, therefore, for his oft-repeated claim that, in our consistent experience, such storage is an artifact of intelligence, and the fact that he continues to repeat the claim strikes me as peculiar."
The "oft-repeated claim" is that in instances where we know the source, it's always an intelligence.davidl1_{October 2, 2021
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I disagree. The point of Racette's article was not "the only intelligence that exists is human intelligence”. It was that Meyer's argument was flawed. You and other don't agree that the arguments is flawed-I know that-, but you should at least be able to see that saying that the argument is flawed is very different from saying that the only intelligence that exists is human. But I agree that if you and others can't see that, it is a waste of time to post here about it.Viola Lee_{October 2, 2021
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All, I just wanted to make a comment or two in response to a few things said here. First, thank you Viola for mentioning (#32) my critique of Meyer's book. I am a contributing writer at Ricochet.com, which is a center-right conservative site. One of the founders, Peter Robinson, is a personal friend of Stephen Meyer, and has interviewed him on more than one occasion. My views are almost certainly not representative of the view of most Ricochet members; I am agnostic, and I think most there would describe themselves as believers. I have a great deal of respect for both science and religion, and my response to Meyer's book has to do with what I think is an unhealthy blending of the two domains that, I believe, does disservice to both. Specifically regarding the portion of my critique Viola quoted: Bornagain77 suggests (#37) that I am missing a key element of Meyer's claim regarding DNA. That's not correct: I am fully aware of Meyer's claims, but the comment Viola quoted is focused specifically on one particular claim that Meyer repeats in his book and frequently in his guest appearances on various programs. That claim is that it is our universal and repeated experience that all functional encoding of information is the product of intelligence. He states this in various ways, but the point is always the same: that *all* instances of "functional information" of which we're aware are the product of a designing intelligence. My point in highlighting this is to point out that it's simply circular reasoning to exclude most of this so-called "functional information" (i.e., that in genetic material) when making that claim, and then to turn around and apply the claim to that previously excluded information. There may well be good reasons to be skeptical that genetic encoding could arise through abiogenesis, but this particular very flawed argument of Meyer's is not one of them. It is, however, a very approachable argument, and one that Meyer uses to good effect when persuading people. Perhaps because much of his book is too technical for his audience, Meyer leans heavily into this argument, and so I singled it out for criticism. My interest in disentangling religion and science is two-fold: I think religion is important and valuable, and that dragging belief down into the realm of the falsifiable is bad for believers; and, honestly, I think science is undermined when otherwise rational people attempt to disprove God through scientific argument. Respectfully, HankHank Racette_{October 2, 2021
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VL
.... it's not the point of the quote from Racette.
Yes it most definitely is. If you didn't get that then it is indeed better that you don't post here anymore. It is not worth your and our time.Origenes on vacation_{October 2, 2021
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Seversky Some of the shards have a triangular shape and sharp edges reminiscent of flint arrowheads found back on Earth. Yet our ship’s sensors found no evidence of intelligent life on a detailed scan of the planet’s surface – no cities, villages, settlements or encampments anywhere. Do we infer that those shards are actually arrowheads or do we infer that they are the result of natural processes?
:) There is a galactic distance between your example and the simplest cell . Maybe you should learn what biologists know about the cell. They know something ,not all but something is more than you know.Hanks_{October 2, 2021
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OoV says, "Racette and Viola would disagree. According to them, the only intelligence that exists is human intelligence" That is absolutely not what I've said, or intended to imply with my post, and it is not the point of the quote from Racette. This is another good example of why I don't post here anymore: instead of careful discussions about what people think the standard responses just jump to all sorts of conclusions driven by ideological preconceptions. My post at 32 was not about my views, so what I believe or don't believe has not been part of my participation. My post was about a critique of a common argument. I really don't want to go on, but I couldn't let OoV's comment go by. Arrgghhh.Viola Lee_{October 2, 2021
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Sev, if there were sufficient cases of evident arrow heads that would be reason to infer arrows designed by makers. Shards at random do not produce arrow head shapes consistently. KFkairosfocus_{October 2, 2021
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Re VL at 32, citing:
But wait. That is – at best – a circular argument. If we include DNA in our initial inventory of “functional” information, then it’s no longer our uniform and repeated experience that such information is the product of intelligence. Rather, it’s our uniform and repeated experience that man-made encoding of information is man-made. That says nothing about not-man-made encoding of information.
Failure to understand inference on reliable sign. Uniform repeated experience of OBSERVED CAUSE of FSCO/I is of intelligently directed configuration. Trillions of cases, no exceptions and other known causal factors are inadequate once there is complexity and non regularity joined to 500 - 1,000 or more bits complexity. Thus we have an inference on reliable sign, even where we have not seen the direct cause. Further to which, the attempt to collapse intelligent cause into human cause fails instantly. Fails so badly that this is a strawman fallacy. For that matter as the phrasing was obvious the pretence that DNA is an exception is also a strawman. The poor quality of objections is now further evidence on the force of the inference on sign. KFkairosfocus_{October 2, 2021
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Seversky,
If we found a recognizable battleship on some distant planet, neither Darwinists nor ID proponents would be arguing about whether or not it was designed
Racette and Viola would disagree. According to them, the only intelligence that exists is human intelligence, and since there are no humans on the distant planet, the battleship could not possibly be intelligently designed. ,Origenes on vacation_{October 2, 2021
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Origenes On Vacation/48
Racette’s argument reminds me of Murray’s article (cannot find it) about that space exploration team which discovered an abandoned battleship at some unknown far away planet. Despite the presence of computers and all sorts of intricate machinery on the abandoned ship, the darwinians on the exploration team were incapable of inferring intelligent design as the cause for the battleship.
If we found a recognizable battleship on some distant planet, neither Darwinists nor ID proponents would be arguing about whether or not it was designed. The obvious questions would be who designed and built it and how did it get there? However, as a counter-example, suppose we landed on another distant planet and found a small ravine or canyon with thousands of shards of flint of different sizes strewn around, apparently haphazardly on the ground. Some of the shards have a triangular shape and sharp edges reminiscent of flint arrowheads found back on Earth. Yet our ship's sensors found no evidence of intelligent life on a detailed scan of the planet's surface - no cities, villages, settlements or encampments anywhere. Do we infer that those shards are actually arrowheads or do we infer that they are the result of natural processes?Seversky_{October 2, 2021
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Viola Lee's post @ 32 just proves that neither she nor Racette understand science. The issue here is there is ONE and ONLY one known cause for producing coded information processing systems and that is via intelligent agency volition. That Racette and Viola can ignore that and prattle on is very telling.ET_{October 2, 2021
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When someone says: "All religions are the same." that involves "All opinions are the same" so how come is upset by other's opinions that are different from his opinions? Maybe he should review his worldview?Hanks_{October 2, 2021
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VL, kindly note the just above. KFkairosfocus_{October 2, 2021
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SA, 52, Racette knows or should know that humans do not exhaust the possibilities for information creation or language, or more broadly, intelligently directed configuration. The attempt to pin inference to design and particularly code to human coders is an example of a strawman fallacy. Moreover, our cells exhibit coded DNA, we are within the set, cell based life. Thus, given the fallacy of circular causation, we are not designers of the DNA in cell based life. However, as coding language users we show the feasibility of such intelligences and thus it is reasonable to infer that the living cell was designed by a code-making, language using designer. Further, as the design uses molecular nanotech [which we are just beginning to do] we can also note that the designer was clearly competent in that field. That he did this sort of strawman resort, is suggestive of the weakness of his argument and determination to cling to a preferred position despite its clear weaknesses. KFkairosfocus_{October 2, 2021
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