My faith is falsifiable, Professor Coyne. Is yours?

_{Vincent Torley

October 12, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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In a recent article in USA Today, Professor Jerry Coyne made the following claim:

I’ve never met a Christian, for instance, who has been able to tell me what observations about the universe would make him abandon his beliefs in God and Jesus. (I would have thought that the Holocaust could do it, but apparently not.) There is no horror, no amount of evil in the world, that a true believer can’t rationalize as consistent with a loving God.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Vincent Torley, and I’m a Christian whose faith in God, Jesus Christ and Intelligent Design is falsifiable. I have the greatest respect for your acknowledged expertise in the field of biology, and I don’t wish to question it for a moment. My Ph.D. is in philosophy, not science. For the record, I accept that the universe is approximately 14 billion years old, and that all living things spring from a common ancestor that lived approximately 4 billion years ago. However, I do not believe that non-foresighted processes (random mutations plus natural selection, in popular parlance) are adequate to account for the complexity we observe in organisms today, or that natural processes suffice to explain the origin of life. Here is a list of observations that would cause me to abandon belief in God, belief in Christianity and belief in Intelligent Design.

Observations that would cause me to abandon belief in God

1. The discovery of a naked singularity – a point in space which could literally spew forth anything “out of the blue” – chairs, pizzas, computers, works of literature, or whatever.

2. The discovery that it was possible for intelligent agents (such as human beings) to go back in time and alter the past.

3. The invention of a machine that could read the propositional content of my thoughts – or those of any other human being who is currently capable of exercising their faculty of reason.

4. A scientific demonstration that our thoughts, words and actions are completely determined by external circumstances beyond our control (heredity plus environment).

5. The invention of a machine that could control the propositional content of my thoughts, and make me believe anything that the machine’s programmer wanted me to believe – or do the same to any other human being who is currently capable of exercising their faculty of reason.

6. The invention of a machine that could control my actions, without impairing my ability to reason and without impairing the link between my beliefs/thoughts/judgments and my actions – or do the same to any other human being who is currently capable of exercising their faculty of reason. Which brings me to…

7. The invention of a machine that could turn me into a person who would willingly perpetrate atrocities like those those committed by the Nazis, without impairing my ability to reason and without impairing the link between my beliefs/thoughts/judgments and my actions – or do the same to any other human being who is currently capable of exercising their faculty of reason. In answer to your question about the Holocaust, Jerry: Nazis wouldn’t destroy my faith in God, but a machine that could turn me (or anyone else) into a willing Nazi, would.

Observations that would cause me to abandon belief in Christianity

1. The discovery of Jesus’ dead body in Palestine.

2. The discovery of archaeological proof that any of the following individuals never existed: Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Jonah, Ezra and Nehemiah – e.g. a letter by a scribe, confessing to having made them up as a work of fiction. (I haven’t included Noah on this list because I suspect that the Biblical Noah is a “telescoping” of two individuals – one of whom lived two million years ago and another who lived 5,000 years ago. I’ve included Daniel and Jonah, because Jesus Christ referred to them as historical individuals.)

3. A human being coming back to life, with an indestructible body. (This human being would also have to contradict one or more of the claims of Christianity.)

4. Documentary evidence of 3., which was at least as strong as the documentary evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

5. Observations confirming that the universe is infinitely old, or is infinite in size.

6. Scientific proof that human beings did not spring from a common stock, and that the human race had a polyphyletic origin.

7. Scientific proof that the following distinctively human abilities arose at different times in the past: the ability to create a language with rules of discourse and a structured grammar; the ability to engage in logical argument (and not just means-end reasoning); the ability to entertain abstract concepts such as “truth,” “goodness” and “beauty”; the ability to entertain a concept of God who is worthy of worship and who punishes wrongdoing; and the ability to believe in a personal after-life. (As a Christian, I believe that all of these human abilities emerged literally overnight, although some of these abilities may not have manifested themselves in the fossil record until long after they appeared.)

8. The discovery of a non-human animal (e.g. a dolphin) possessing one or more of the abilities listed above.

9. The discovery of a race or tribe of human beings who are currently capable of exercising their faculty of reason, but who are utterly incapable of even comprehending – let alone accepting – the Gospel message.

10. The creation of a machine that was capable of conversing at length about any topic – including its own mental states and life story – in such a way that it could fool an audience of intelligent people into thinking that it was human.

Observations that would cause me to abandon belief in Intelligent Design

1. An empirical or mathematical demonstration that the probability of the emergence of life on Earth during the past four billion years as a result of purely natural processes, without any intelligent guidance and starting from a random assortment of organic chemicals, is greater than 10^-120.

2. An empirical or mathematical demonstration that the probability of the emergence of any of the irreducibly complex structures listed on this page, as a result of non-foresighted processes (“random mutations plus natural selection”) is greater than 10^-120.

Observations that would cause me to abandon belief in Christianity and/or Intelligent Design

1. A scientific demonstration that the human brain was sub-optimally designed for a human primate – in other words, that it would have been possible for an Intelligent Designer to have manipulated our ancestors’ genes in such a way as to generate human beings which looked just like us, but whose neural architecture was much more efficiently wired.

I could go on, but I think that’s about enough for one day. Suffice it to say that my faith is falsifiable. What about your atheism?

Comments

ba writes, "If not Can you please show me the list of the vast majority of atheists that are not 100% sure about this ‘positive’ claim for materialism?." I haven't been following this thread, so I don't know what remark this was in response to, but I can give you a list of one of people who are atheists but "not 100% sure about materialism": me There are many ways that one can believe that there is more to the universe than the material world without believing in a divine being. Although I am strongly agnostic about our being able to actually know, I lean more toward believing that the material world is part of, in some way, some larger type of reality than I do towards believing in pure materialism.Aleta_{October 13, 2010
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JM, The ironic thing in all this is that 'material' as has been classically defined for centuries, is a fantasy. There simply is no solid 'material' particle at the base of reality somewhere! So in reality the whole point of reasoning you are using should be turned around. i.e. The comparisons to Santa Clause, Unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters etc.. etc.. should be laid at materialists feet when they speak of some material process creating this or that!! Agree?bornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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A response:
Coyne's article is filled with irony. "Science operates by using evidence and reason. Doubt is prized, authority rejected," he says. Unless one questions global warming or, cough, cough, evolution, of course.
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JM, to make this perfectly clear: Do not the vast majority of atheists claim that purely material processes created everything, especially all life on earth, through purely material processes? (I can think of no exception) If not Can you please show me the list of the vast majority of atheists that are not 100% sure about this 'positive' claim for materialism?bornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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Collin @ 51:
Materialism IS a positive claim. If it were not a positive claim, there wouldn’t be philosophers writing papers arguing for materialism.
A-santaclause-ism IS a positive claim. If it were not a positive claim, there wouldn't be adults explaining to their older children the non-existence of Santa. Collin, let me ask you a question. If I say "Sir Issac Newton is alive and well and living in my attic," and you say "That's unlikely at best, and very probably not true," to with which one of us does the burden of proof fall?jurassicmac_{October 13, 2010
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gpuccio, I agree with your statement about planetary probabilities. We are getting a lot more details these days, but there is so much that we do not know. What I would like to know, is this: Is there anything in the Universe as weird, beautiful, complex and amazing as life, but totally different?Collin_{October 13, 2010
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Materialism IS a positive claim. If it were not a positive claim, there wouldn't be philosophers writing papers arguing for materialism. It says, "there is NOTHING else." That is a positive claim. Atheism can be a positive claim, depending on how it is viewed. It could be viewed like this, "I don't believe in God." this is NOT a positive claim. But if the statement is "There is no God" or "The likelihood of God is really low" etc., that is a positive claim; an expression of belief (not just a lack thereof).Collin_{October 13, 2010
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Mark: No, their argument is not invalid, but quantitatively less defined. The problem is that we know too little of cosmology. The fine tuning argument for the whole universe, while very powerful, especially in the form given by Penrose and others, has the problem that we are dealing with the origin of all that we know (the universe, indeed), and so the argument, while partly scientific, has certainly a philosophical "edge". The arguments about planetary probabilities are fine, but how do we really compute planetary probabilities? Astrophysics is IMO still too vague to allow final quantitative considerations of that kind. We can reason, but we have to wonder if the way we understand cosmology and planetary events is really accurate. I will problebly wait for a better model of dark energy :) Biology is very different. The chronological context is defined in a better way, and has many different "windows", some of them very large (4 billion years for the whole ndevelopment and evolution of life), others much more restricted (the Cambrian explosion, the evolution of humans). That allows us to observe similar phenomena (the emergence of new proteins) in different time frames. Moreover, we have a quite good understanding of many aspects of molecular biology, and a rapidly growing set of data (genomes, proteomes, transcriptomes). And many aspects can be dealtg with also in the lab. For all those reasons, and many others, I do believe that the argument of biological design is the strongest and the most interesting. And there is also the impodtant consideration that, while astrophysics is a vague but varied field of knowledge, with many different theories competing in serene, although not always detailed, creativity, biological evolution has become a field entirely and aggressively monopolized by a single, ugly and false theory. And that is, indeed, a big difference.gpuccio_{October 13, 2010
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vjtorley, My response is that the discovery of even one corner of the cosmos where chaos reigned supreme would be disastrous, as it would allow uncaused events to disrupt the order of the cosmos. And it doesn't bother you in the slightest that your example requires us to be able to observe uncaused events? Or that you're postulating the possibility of the order of the cosmos itself being disrupted, but you can't be sure it's happening until we go find a naked singularity? Shouldn't disruption in the order of the cosmos be rather obvious? This just seems deeply wrong. Principally, wrong that it could be something you could observe, right out of the gates. Claims 3 to 7 hinge on the underlying assumption that libertarian free will is required for genuine human agency. Kyrilluk doubts this assumption; but if it is false, then I am responsible for anything that a machine can make me do, willingly – even if the machine makes me give up my old beliefs and espouse ones which I previously considered diabolical. I don’t know any theist who would say that. I don't see where one would be "responsible for anything that a machine can make you do". Indeed, that seems like a good argument against responsibility. But this is beside the point. This just leads me back to saying: This doesn't, and wouldn't, falsify the existence of God. Now, perhaps it would cause you to cease believing in God - but that's not a falsification. Just as the "blue sun in Dallas" scenario may cause someone to cease believing in God, but it isn't a falsification. I really enjoy reading your posts and comments here, so pardon my spirited objections in this case. But I can't help but get the feeling that you're using the word 'falsification' here to make a metaphysical, theological, and philosophical claim sound as if it were a mundane scientific question. Or worse, falling into the mindset where every belief must not only be capable of having evidence weigh against it, but must be falsifiable in some 'scientific' sense of the word.nullasalus_{October 13, 2010
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#34 Gpuccio You may prefer to avoid cosmological examples but the fact is many of your colleagues assert that they are examples of incredibly improbable outcomes with a function. They then conclude design. You want to add the condition that the outcome should be a digital string and put it in a biological context, but the argument is essentially the same - and it becomes a/the way of falsifying design! Is their argument invalid?markf_{October 13, 2010
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Dr Torley and others, this is a little off topic but may be of great interest to you: There is a new book coming out: God and Evolution with chapters by: William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, Denyse O’Leary, David Klinghoffer, Jonathan Wells, John West, Jonathan Witt, Casey Luskin, Logan Paul Gage, The trailer is very well done: http://www.faithandevolution.org/god-and-evolution/ there is also a small treasure trove of video clips here: http://www.faithandevolution.org/god-and-evolution/video-clips.phpbornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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JM you state: 'I’m not sure why this is so hard to understand.' My sentiments exactly! :) JM whatever we may presuppose about the 'certainty' of our ability to ascertain reality, the fact is that there are only two options on the table for reality. It is either materialistic or it is Theistic. I was very careful to state that IF you denied the existence of God then you by default make the positive claim for materialism. I was also very careful to explain that many atheists are of that dogmatic type who visit UD. In fact Day after Day UD readers deal with hard core atheists who are very adamant in their positive claims that material processes, and ONLY material processes, created everything around us including ourselves. And with great delight many UD readers excel in the ability of pointing out the fact that these hard core atheists have not one shred of empirical evidence for those claims! But you sit here and act as if I have not personally witnessed this going on for several years now?!? JM you cannot mix, what is in essence, a 'agnostic' position of uncertainty, to what we are dealing with here!. i.e. We are not in some frat house discussing God over beers where such things can be presented without direct recourse to evidence but we are in fact on UD dealing firsthand with the evidence, denials, and countervailing evidence:bornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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bornagain77:
Perhaps you say it is all semantics or whatever JM but the undeniable point is IF you deny God, (not if you are uncertain about God) you by default make a positive claim for materialism, for whatever form of materialism you may choose from the wide variety they have.
But materialism isn't a positive claim either! A materialist sees no compelling reason to believe in the supernatural, just as an atheist sees no compelling reason to believe in god. Again, even the most strident materialist would never say, if they were speaking carefully, that they are 100% sure that nothing supernatural exists; just that there is no compelling reason to believe that it does. Your statement is like saying: "If you say that you do not believe in leprechauns, you are making the positive claim that magic doesn't exist." (that would be a negative claim.) No one goes "I believe in materialism, therefore I reject the idea of God," but rather: "I know of no convincing evidence for the supernatural, therefore I do not believe in it." I'm not sure why it has to be explained that if someone makes the claim that something exists, (either God or the supernatural realm) without presenting compelling evidence, It is not making a positive claim for someone else to reject such assertions. Again, If I were to say that I don't believe that unicorns exist, it is neither making a positive claim, nor would I be making the negative claim that they don't exist. I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand.jurassicmac_{October 13, 2010
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markf (#35) In answer to your question about the Fall, I see it as happening to one common ancestor of all human beings - or at the very most, a tribe from which we all sprang. Before the Fall, the human genome would have been Divinely protected from deterioration, in ways in which it is not now. Since the Fall, I would expect a considerable number of deleterious traits to have accumulated in the human genome.vjtorley_{October 13, 2010
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JM you ask, 'Do you still think that saying “I’m not convinced that there is a god,” is making a positive claim?' JM that question reflects a reasonable position, and I am fairly sure you are well aware that most of the atheists that visit UD are not nearly that reasonable but, as markf just did a few posts ago, are of the type that make a dogmatic and positive claim for materialism. (however whatever that material basis is they usually do not say :) ) Thus I have an example on this very thread that atheists do in fact make positive claims: markf post 29 'As it happens I am both an atheist and materialist.' Perhaps you say it is all semantics or whatever JM but the undeniable point is IF you deny God, (not if you are uncertain about God) you by default make a positive claim for materialism, for whatever form of materialism you may choose from the wide variety they have.bornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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JM, It is not my fault that 350 million Buddhist are inconsistent in their logic. You either believe in God or you do not. If you do not believe in God you are forced to take any one of a multitude of absurd materialistic positions. You can argue they are not materialists but please 'enlighten me' (pun intended) as to why their particular form of atheism should not be considered materialistic in its basis since they in fact deny the 'Universal Consciousness" (to get 'eastern' on you) that is God???bornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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JM to clarify what I had stated about the 'flying spaghetti monster' being a core atheist argument from theodicy, The arguments I use to have with nakashima would often go like this: He would argue that such and such was not designed by God because God would not possibly design something that way,,, and failing that, as many times he was as he would be embarrassed by 'optimal design', he would resort to trying to define God in such a way that God was inconsistent with reality, hence the 'flying spaghetti monster' refrain he would often invoke. Yet both such arguments are theological in their basis in trying to find an inconsistency with God and reality. 1. show God would not have done it that way 2. show the concept of God to be inconsistent with reality Yet the kicker is that nakashima somehow mysteriously and "naturally' knew how God should be properly understood in order to be able to make the countervailing arguments in the first place. :) i.e. He understood God to be transcendent and all powerful. JM I hope that cleared up a little bit where I come from on the whole 'flying spaghetti monster thing. :)bornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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ba77 @ 28:
JM, remind me again how invoking the flying spaghetti monster in a responce to me is not in fact a core atheistic argument from theodicy???
Ba77, your statement here makes me inclined to think that you don't know what theodicy means. How does anything I've said relate to theodicy in any way? It's like you're a broken record, stuck on that particular term for some reason. Theodicy deals with the explanation for suffering in pain. Not to belabor the point, what I was pointing out was that it makes no sense to call atheism a positive argument, to which you have not responded. I've said nothing about evil, or suffering, or pain, or anything of that sort. My personal belief is that although atheists do have some good arguments, an argument against the existence of God from theodicy is not one of them. Pain and suffering are more than adequately explained by Christian theology. Just wanted to get that out of the way.
And please remind me again how ‘not atheist’ you are when you continually seem to argue from that position to me!
I have never once argued from the atheistic position, to you or to anyone else, because, as I have explained before, I am not an atheist. Christians sometimes make ridiculous arguments. (such as you did in 13) Attempting to prevent a fellow believer from continuing to make claims that are embarrassing to the faith does not make one an atheist any more than one chemist correcting another makes the first an alchemist. There are good arguments for theism. There are terrible arguments for theism. Parroting them both interchangeably, without discretion, dilutes the good ones.
You may claim that by denying Theism one is not forced to a materialistic position
Again with the reading comprehension. I said no such thing. I said nothing even resembling that. What I said was: "Even postulating materialism isn’t making a positive claim. It’s just saying that one doesn’t believe in the supernatural." This has nothing to do with the relationship between atheism and materialism. Now, I didn't say that "Denying theism, one isn't forced to a materialistic position," but for the most part, I tentatively agree with that statement, for one reason: there are hundreds of millions of atheists who aren't materialists: Buddhists. So, obviously a person can be an atheist while at the same time not be a materialist. There are at least 350 million instances of this. If your goal was to spurt unrelated buzzwords to distract from my original statement, you've succeeded. I'll phrase it as a question for clarity: Do you still think that saying "I'm not convinced that there is a god," is making a positive claim?jurassicmac_{October 13, 2010
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markf, you just redefined the answer to suit what you believe in what you wrote!?! And did not address what you had stated! I was hoping you would invoke some reincarnation mumbo jumbo which I could address with infinite regress but alas you did not stray to far from home,, None-the-less your 'hard materialist' position is absurd! notes: This following video is very good, and easy to understand, for pointing out some of the unanswerable dilemmas that quantum mechanics presents to the atheistic philosophy of materialism as materialism is popularly understood: Dr. Quantum - Double Slit Experiment & Entanglement - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4096579/ This following experiment extended Wheeler's delayed choice double slit experiment, which I referenced earlier, to highlight the centrality of 'information' in the Double Slit Experiment and refutes any 'detector centered' arguments for why the wave collapses: (Double Slit) A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser - updated 2007 Excerpt: Upon accessing the information gathered by the Coincidence Circuit, we the observer are shocked to learn that the pattern shown by the positions registered at D0 (Detector Zero) at Time 2 depends entirely on the information gathered later at Time 4 and available to us at the conclusion of the experiment. (i.e. This experiment clearly shows that the detector is secondary in the experiment and that a conscious observer, being able to know the information of which path a photon takes with local certainty, is primary to the wave collapsing to a particle in the experiment. The act of a detector detecting a photon at an earlier time in the experiment does not determine if the wave will be collapsed at the end of the experiment. Only the availability of the information to the observer is what matters for the wave to collapse. That is what he meant by 'we the observer are shocked to learn') http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/kim-scully/kim-scully-web.htm It is interesting to note that some materialists seem to have a very hard time grasping the simple point of the double slit experiments, but to try to put it more clearly; To explain an event which defies time and space, as the quantum erasure experiment clearly does, you cannot appeal to any material entity in the experiment like the detector, or any other 3D physical part of the experiment, which is itself constrained by the limits of time and space. To give an adequate explanation for defying time and space one is forced to appeal to a transcendent entity which is itself not confined by time or space. But then again I guess I can see why forcing someone who claims to be a atheistic materialist to appeal to a non-material transcendent entity, to give an adequate explanation, would invoke such utter confusion on their part. Yet to try to put it in even more 'shocking' terms, the 'shocking' conclusion of the experiment is that a transcendent Mind, with a capital M, must precede the collapse of quantum waves to 3-Dimensional particles. Moreover, it is impossible for a human mind to ever 'emerge' from any 3-D material particle which is itself semi-dependent on our 'observation' for its own collapse to a 3D reality in the first place. This is more than a slight problem for the atheistic-evolutionary materialist who insists that our minds 'emerged', or evolved, from 3D matter. In the following article Professor Henry puts it more clearly than I can: The Mental Universe - Richard Conn Henry - Professor of Physics John Hopkins University Excerpt: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.,,, Physicists shy away from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke "decoherence" - the notion that "the physical environment" is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in "Renninger-type" experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf Astrophysicist John Gribbin comments on the Renninger experiment here: Solving the quantum mysteries - John Gribbin Excerpt: From a 50:50 probability of the flash occurring either on the hemisphere or on the outer sphere, the quantum wave function has collapsed into a 100 per cent certainty that the flash will occur on the outer sphere. But this has happened without the observer actually "observing" anything at all! It is purely a result of a change in the observer's knowledge about what is going on in the experiment. http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/John_Gribbin/quantum.htm#Solving i.e. The detector is completely removed as to being the primary cause of quantum wave collapse in the experiment. As Richard Conn Henry clearly implied previously, in the experiment it is found that 'The physical environment' IS NOT sufficient within itself to 'create reality', i.e. 'The physical environment' IS NOT sufficient to explain quantum wave collapse to a 'uncertain' 3D particle. Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,,, Walt Whitman - Miracles etc.. etc.. etc..bornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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#31 vjtorley I won't pursue the example any further. I am more interested in what you write about the fall. You write that "I accept that the universe is approximately 14 billion years old, and that all living things spring from a common ancestor that lived approximately 4 billion years ago" So how do see the fall panning out in biological terms? Did it happen to just one common ancestor of all humans or to multiple ancestors simultaneously or what?markf_{October 13, 2010
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Mark: cosmological or planet related arguments are interesting, but they are very difficult to treat, Rigurous computations of target space or search space are difficult and very subjective. That's why I stick to biological arguments and dFSCI. You should appreciate that I try to remain in a field where there are no such ambiguities. You say: "If the coin tosses had indeed happened then the ID folk would have used it as proof of God!" No, again that would be an empirical falsification of the concepts at the basis of ID. So again, please offer an example, just one, of a digital string emerged in a random system, without any contribution of designers, which has the following properties: (a)is functional (has some use) (b)it is incredibly improbable to have happened through chance (c)was not designed If you agree that such a string will never come out of a non design system, then you have simply accepted the obvious: that the ID concept of dFSCI as an absolutely reliable marker of design is true. The simple truth is that such a concept is so self-evident that, if really a sequence of coin tossing gave a working software, I suppose that anyone, including you, would really look for some possible design explanation (intelligent tampering with the system, or similar).gpuccio_{October 13, 2010
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#32 An atheist might belief that every person has an immaterial mind which arises as a consequence of material causes. After all mental events are undoubtably affected by external physical causes. So if you believe mental events are immaterial you must already accept that material causes can have immaterial effects.markf_{October 13, 2010
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markf, you would agree with Hitler himself if need be just so to reaffirm your atheism so I don't really consider your endorsement of what he wrote to be that helpful to his position! :) You also clarified this markf: "I wrote that there is nothing inconsistent with being an atheist and believing in an immaterial mind." I still have no clue how you can logically maintain this! The absurdities of possible answers you may supply are everywhere. But just for entertainment please do elaborate what you feel is a possible solution that does not end in absurdity.bornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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markf (#25) Thanks for your interesting question about the brain. With regards to your "gene discovery" scenario, I'd say: no, that would not falsify the existence of God. A single gene is a very minor modification. The first human beings may have originally had the gene and then lost it, as a consequence of the Fall. However I take it that the Fall did not fundamentally rewire our brains, and I don't know of any Christian who has argued that it did. What I'm envisaging in my example is a radical change in our neural architecture which results in a significant improvement in mental function, without requiring any fundamental morphological changes. In other words, we'd still be human primates, anatomically speaking. That's important, because the fact that some other kind of animal might have a brain that works better than ours is neither here nor there. Rather, the theological question we need to answer is: did God do a proper job when He made human beings - or more specifically, did God do a proper job when He made the human brain?vjtorley_{October 13, 2010
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nullasalus Thank you for your posts. As regards Professor Coyne's remarks about what would get him to believe in God: you'll notice that in the quote you provided, he didn't say "God," but "God or other supernatural forces." That gives him quite a bit of leeway. He could still say that some higher intelligence (or intelligences) was behind the supernatural signs he enumerated (e.g. blind people being healed, or angels appearing in the sky), without it necessarily being God. But what I want to know is: what would persuade Professor Coyne to give up atheism and acknowledge the existence of God? If, as you say, the only kind of God that Professor Coyne is willing to consider is one that has absolutely nothing to do with the cosmos, then I'd have to rule out that kind of Deity by Occam's razor. What I'd like to know is: what would persuade Coyne that the cosmos was originally created by God ex nihilo and is conserved in existence by Him? Finally, I'm a bit shocked by your statement that none of the seven basic observations I listed would destroy your faith in God. Think of it this way. Theists are always citing order in the cosmos as powerful evidence for the existence of God - and rightly so. But it's not really fair of them to cite that as evidence, unless they're also willing to answer the question: "How much disorder would the universe have to contain, for belief in God to become unreasonable?" Some theists might respond: "If the universe were totally lawless, then it would be reasonable to believe in a godless world - but of course, if it were lawless, we wouldn't be here anyway." My response is that the discovery of even one corner of the cosmos where chaos reigned supreme would be disastrous, as it would allow uncaused events to disrupt the order of the cosmos. Hence every accessible nook and cranny of the cosmos has to be regulated by laws, for belief in God to be reasonable. (I said accessible, because I don't care about black holes.) That explains my "naked singularity" claim; if there were one, it would wreak havoc in the surrounding cosmos, because of its causality violations. Likewise, time travel is ruled out, because of the "grandmother" paradox (again, a violation of causality). Claims 3 to 7 hinge on the underlying assumption that libertarian free will is required for genuine human agency. Kyrilluk doubts this assumption; but if it is false, then I am responsible for anything that a machine can make me do, willingly - even if the machine makes me give up my old beliefs and espouse ones which I previously considered diabolical. I don't know any theist who would say that.vjtorley_{October 13, 2010
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#21 BA77 Are you smoking something over there? I just read your debate with jurassicmac and agree with him that your comments seem to bear no relation to what he wrote. Then I read your comment #21: Does everything come from a material basis, as materialism is classically defined, or does it not come from a materialistic basis? i.e. If human minds do not have a material basis, but are in fact thoroughly immaterial in their independent basis as many studies indicate, how does your own brain not explode on your inconsistency of logic for saying your are a materialist and yet believe in the immaterial human mind??? I didn't claim I believed in an immaterial mind. I wrote that there is nothing inconsistent with being an atheist and believing in an immaterial mind. As it happens I am both an atheist and materialist.markf_{October 13, 2010
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JM, remind me again how invoking the flying spaghetti monster in a responce to me is not in fact a core atheistic argument from theodicy??? And please remind me again how 'not atheist' you are when you continually seem to argue from that position to me! I'm sorry if I have misconstrued you several times before but I can only address the words you write down on a thread and not the innermost beliefs you may or may not harbor! And I will address such as I see written down accordingly! You may claim that by denying Theism one is not forced to a materialistic position but that is logically incoherent, for in fact one is forced to either one or the other position no matter how convoluted the path may be for the person to realize that truth! And I can state with as much certainty as is possible for a man to make that reality is Theistic in its origination and in the sustaining of its existence: Let There Be Light http://lettherebelight-77.blogspot.com/2009/10/intelligent-design-anthropic-hypothesis_19.htmlbornagain77_{October 13, 2010
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#24 Gpuccio I think you remember that “no plausible explanation based on necessity or chance” is only a colateral requirements to affirm CSI. The main requirements are (functional) specification and complexity I thought you were talking about CSI in general - not FSCI - but never mind we will go with functional. What is the definition of complex: probability of arising through chance is less than < the universal probability bound. To say something is complex is to say there is no plausible explanation based on chance. I cannot understand how you always manage to wriggle out of this! Anyhow, moving to you example, what you seem to be asking for is something (other than life)which (a)is functional (has some use) (b)it is incredibly improbable to have happened through chance (c)was not designed The ID literature is stuffed full of examples which purport to satisfy (a) and (b). The probability of our planet having all those characteristics required for life. Of course, you will then say that just proves it was designed! If the coin tosses had indeed happened then the ID folk would have used it as proof of God!markf_{October 13, 2010
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"9. The discovery of a race or tribe of human beings who are currently capable of exercising their faculty of reason, but who are utterly incapable of even comprehending – let alone accepting – the Gospel message." There is a tribe in the amazon that wont believe anything but 'eye witness accounts'. They are fully capable of the faculty of reason, and with their reason they decide that they cant believe anything they've not seen for themselves. I read an account of a mission worker trying to spread the gospel, but when they asked him if he knew anybody that had personally met this Jesus that he was referring too, they basically lost interest in what he had to say at that point, and eventually he de-converted from christianity. Unfortunately i can't provide my source for this info.Bravoman_{October 13, 2010
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bornagain 77 @ 22
Though you claim you are merely stating that you don’t believe in Almighty God, that is merely dressing on the cake for a argument from Theodicy that you are really basing your logic on for you atheistic presupposition!!!
What? I repeat: What!? Did you even read my post? First of all, I'm not an atheist myself. Second, I didn't say the first thing about theodicity. How you jumped straight there without addressing anything else I said is just bizarre. Since I've informed you that I'm a Christian on several occasions, the charge that I'm basing my 'logic' on a 'atheistic presupposition' is just absurd. The only thing I'm pointing out is that your statement from 13 that 'atheism is a positive claim,' is nonsense. Saying that one doesn't accept the existence of God is no more a positive claim than saying that one doesn't accept the existence of leprechauns. I'm not arguing that atheism or materialism are true, just that they're not positive claims. (I would think this would be self-evident, and not have to be pointed out to even the most anti-intellectual of believers) Even Dawkins admits that when he is speaking carefully, would never say that he is 100% sure that God does not exist.
And you does this however loosely materialism must be defined, as is now vogue with atheists, so that you may have false cover for the argument from Theodicy that you are really trying to make.
Please brush up on your reading comprehension. My comment didn't have the slightest thing to do with theodicity. You're just bizarrely putting words in my mouth and making uniformed assumptions about my beliefs.jurassicmac_{October 13, 2010
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