We Will if You Will

_{Barry Arrington

March 18, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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In response to Dr. Torley’s post here, commenter Graham asks: “Can we now drop the pretense and just declare UD/ID to be religious”?

Well Graham, let’s think about that. ID theory posits that some observations are best explained as the result of the acts of an intelligent agent. The theory does not posit any particular agent and the agent need not be a deity. It could, for example, be the aliens Dawkins speculated about in his interview with Ben Stein.

To be sure, many ID proponents believe the intelligent agent is God. But that is a possible implication of the theory, not part of the theory itself.

Neo-Darwinian evolution (NDE) posits that unguided material forces are sufficient to produce all that we see and thus there is no need for a designer. The obvious implication of the theory is that atheism is a valid scientific conclusion. Again, Dawkins: “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

Many proponents of NDE are atheists. But atheism is a possible implication of the theory, not part of the theory itself.

You ask if we can declare ID to be religious because some people take ID and run with its implications in theological directions. Well, a lot of people take NDE and run with its implications in theological directions. (Atheism is nothing if not a “religous” position)

Tell you what, I am happy to call ID religious if you will also call NDE religous to the same extent. Deal?

Comments

c: if there is no God, why do we find ourselves morally governed, and what is the is that GROUNDS ought — or, does ought reduce to “THE HIGHEST RIGHT IS MIGHT? To divide your question into two parts: Why do we find ourselves with a moral instict? 17 --> Diversionary and caricaturing. The issue is not moral perceptions but he reality of being under the obligation of OUGHT and the grounds for ought. 18 --> Are you prepared to argue that torturing and murdering 3 month old infants is not wrong, but merely cuts across the instincts and perceptions of a social animal? 19 --> In that case, you have implied the point: evo mat entails that might makes right and is morally absurd. Because in social animals, cooperation brings with it a selective advantage. 20 --> indeed, that is why gangs form and go out on pillage, small scale up to grand scale, as say happened with the Nazis. 21 --> Indeed, they were arguing precisely to the advantage of the evolutionarily superior, too. That is why we had a holocaust: eugenics on steroids. It’s the same reason we have an instinct to eat, an instinct to mate, and an instinct to avoid pain: it is advantageous in our case to have such instincts. 22 --> You have diverted, as already corrected. The second part of your question illustrates the fallacy of argumentum ad consequentiam and thus is not a valid objection. 23 --> Actually, you are here diverting attention from the patent moral absurdity of evolutionary materialism. It is amoral, tries to reduce ought to advantage or some other relative factor and ends up in the utter and destructive absurdity of might makes right. 24 --> the concerned onlooker should take note. d: If there is no ought, but we find ourselves deluded that we are subject to its force, what does this imply about the general credibility of mind to form any belief worth trusting and acting on? e: Likewise, what then is our significance as beings in our world, personally and collectively? Also mostly an argumentum ad consequentiam, you assume that everyone is ‘deluded that we are subject to “ought’s” force.’ 25 --> Compounding the fallacy. It is evo mat that lacks an IS that can ground OUGHT, and that is what was pointed out, By your dismissal, you imply the correctness of that point. 26 --> on that alone, many people will find good reason to conclude that evo mat CANNOT be right. (whatever ‘ought’s force” means in this context) 27 --> Further confirming the amorality and absurdity of evo mat, as well as its inability to face basic moral facts as certain as any other of consequence. If you’re asking what reason there is to think that evolution would have equipped us to gather ‘truth’, then that’s simple: having the ability to accurately model our environment, i.e, to have beliefs and conceptions about reality that are closer to being ‘true’ than to ‘not true’ is abundantly advantageous for survival. 28 --> as already pointed out, a category confusion. That which works well enough to be reinforced and that which is actually accurate to reality are utterly distinct. 29 --> If you need an example, consider the utility of electronics circuit models or even Newtonian dynamics, which are both known not to correspond accurately to reality. But they work well enough to be the foundation of our technical culture. The last sentence of your question is again, an argument from consequences. 30 --> Yet another dismissive dodging of a serious question, and one that evo mat -- as usual -- has no adequate answer to: what then is our significance as beings in our world, personally and collectively? 31 --> the answer that cannot mnet the light of day: we are accidents, the mindless result of a mindless chaos we imagine is a cosmos, and therefore we have no significance, and no value as beings, individually and collectively. 32 --> So, on evo mat there is no value of the person, no dignity, no moral equality that demands respect and dignified treatment. All reduces to power and "right" is a question of might makes right. 33 --> Thank God, evo mat is logically self-refuting by virtue of being self-referentially incoherent, as say Haldane recognised in the 1930's:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." [["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (Highlight and emphases added.)]
>> _______________ JM has some serious re-thinking to do. As do other evolutionary materialists. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 22, 2011
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F/N: It is worth excerpting JM's responses to the cluster of Q's above and specifically commenting on points. Q's A and following were posed by me: ______________ >> a: what is the observed universe, and whence cometh it, given that it credibly had a beginning? I don’t pretend to know how the universe got here. 1 --> But, that the universe credibly had a beginning immediately implies that it has necessary causal factors external to itself, and has a cause. 2 --> Even through a suggested chain of multiverses and oscillations etc, that points to the root of such a contingent order: a necessary being with the knowledge, skill and power to create a cosmos such as we observe, one that is fine-tuned for C-chemistry, cell based intelligent life. 3 --> this already points to the reality of a Designer and maker of the cosmos, who is personal, mentally capable, immaterial [the origin of matter, which is contingent ans so not necessary, is in question] and awesomely powerful 4 --> So, pardon, but that is a rhetorical dodge, especially as just a link away, there was a significant discussion to be engaged. But I must point out one oddity in your question. We have every reason to think that time, space, and matter arose simultaneously in the big bang.; there was no ‘time’ before the big bang. 5 --> thus, we see a beginning therefore the implication of radical contingency and external cause That being the case, it may not make sense to ask what happened ‘before’ the big bang, since ‘before’ is a time-dependent word. 6 --> Strawman. At no point did I use the term before/after. Instead I pointed to the existence of a beginning, and onward to the contrast between contingent and necessary beings. 7 --> that a necessary being would have to exist in a different order that transcends our observed space-time reality may be strange to us, but it is a logical implication of a space-time order that has a beginning. 8 --> From the moment our order came into being, whether 13.7 BYA or whenever, it had a cause that was necessarily external to it, and which traces onward to a necessary order of being. b: how did it come to be fine tuned to support C-chemistry, cell based, intelligent life? I don’t pretend to know why the universe is the way it is. 9 --> Another dodge. the issue, plainly is an inference to best explanation on our experience of cause and effect. 10 --> By the very act of dodging, the implication is that JM knows or should know that the best empirically credible explanation for a Wicken wiring diagram based complex functional organised entity is design, which in turn points to a designer. But this question has an oddity as well; you’re assuming from the outset that the universe is ‘fined tuned’. 11 --> Had JM bothered to attend to the linked 101 level discussion on cosmological finetuning, he would have discovered (i) that the reality of fine tuning is a commonplace of cosmology, resting on the work of principals such as Hoyle et al, and (ii) that this fine tuning includes major aspects where it pivots on things that we do know very well such as the properties of water and the reasons for the relative abundance of four key elements: H, He, C, O. 12 --> So, the assertion that I am "assuming" is a rhetorical strawman put in my mouth and ducking the weight of evidence. The top minds in physics don’t yet understand enough about the laws and constants to make comments about their relationships to each other; 12 --> WHAT! This is patently false, flying in the face of the very reason why, on examining and commenting on just such relationships, the implication of fine-tuning has emerged. 13 --> this is a blatant, brazenly false, utterly discrediting declaration. for all we know, given the value for the strength of gravity, it may be that the electromagnetic force, and strong & weak nuclear forces, etc could not possibly have been other way. 14 --> If there is a super-law that forces the cosmological forces into relationships, that would point to finetuning at the next level up. The long sought theory of everything, if it specifies such finetuning, would in turn be fine tuned. So, this objection is pointless. 15 --> In addition, the issue is not just on relationships of laws, but of boundary conditions and brute givens, such as the balance of the number of protons and electrons on a cosmological scale to achieve essentially neutral electrical charge on the whole -- the EM force is long range and is vastly stronger than gravity. Similarly, the mass of the cosmos is quite delicately balanced, and many more. With a sample size of one, it’s hard to make informed speculations about ways that universes could possibly be, but that doesn’t seem to keep people from trying. 16 --> Dismissive and even disrespectful rhetoric in the teeth of evidence. On a sample size of One we can indeed see that there are relationships that are set up in ways that facilitate C-chemistry cell based intelligent life, such as the parameters and properties of H2O and relative abundance of the required elements, which go right to the heart of physics of atoms, stars and the universe as a whole. [ . . . ]kairosfocus_{March 22, 2011
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Further yet to this, the pivotal issue of morality as delusion on evo mat premises that I raised, turns on the obvious implication that if we are under a delusion that OUGHT is real and binding, then a major aspect of our view of reality and the way we live in that light is delusional. Whether or not you want to face it, that does raise the question that the mind, on evo mat premises, is profoundly delusional. Which then raises the serious further question of whether we can trust the "secretions" of a jumped up monkey brain, on any subject of significance. Nor is this novel: Darwin raised the question, and so did Haldane, so has Crick by implication, and so on. Ducking and dismissing such a serious and self-referential question as a fallacious appeal to consequences, has not addressed the material issue. Sadly, strawman again. There is another example that clinches the seriousness of the problem. For, in the case of the Biblical, NT text, you have said:
Jesus died nearly 20 centuries ago. We know this via conflicting accounts to which we don’t have the original documents, accounts that we know for a fact have been modified over time. (even Bart Ehrman’s most vociferous opponents concede that there are over 200,000 textual variants in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.) Surely you must realize why some view the claim that Jesus rose from the dead with a bit more skepticism than the claim that water boils a 212 °F? . . .
1 --> You here immediately reveal your reliance on a selectively hyperskeptical former evangelical. 2 --> You resort to the uncalled for injection of a radical disharmony into accounts where there is diversity, and seem to forget that it is NORMAL for true testimony from separate eyewitnesses to conflict on minor details, with these conflicts resolving themselves in many cases on deeper examination. [E.g. cf my examination of a similar accusation about the timeline of the first Easter morning, here. It is always possible to make diverse accounts seem to be in contradiction, but in fact if there are circumstances under which the diverse accounts can be harmonised, on strict logic the claim, contradiction falls to the ground. Difficulties and apparent conflicts we may have and may have to think hard about, but we should not toss the rhetorical grenade "contradiction" around loosely. And, difficulties are a NORMAL state of historical investigations. Where, all that is needed to bring the crucial gospel event issues to focus is that the NT documents are reasonable as history. Inspiration by God and questions over inerrancy are secondary to that, and are theological-philosophical conclusions, not critical points that if questioned overturn the credibility of say 1 Cor 15:1 - 11 as eyewitness lifetime history tracing to the circle of witnesses in Jerusalem by 35 - 38 AD, in the teeth of the opponents; and in the further ("according to the scriptures") context of Isa 52 - 53 as predictive prophecy put down on paper so to speak 700 years before the fact.] 3 --> Your "accounts that have been modified over time" and appeal to the want of the autograph copies are both strawmanish and a snide suggestion of overall deliberate falsification. So is your comment on more variants than places in the NT. 4 --> Any reasonable, as opposed to selectively hyperskeptical examination, would accept that it is NORMAL for texts of classical times, not to have autographs -- though the Rylands fragment c. 125 AD [and which aptly contains Pilate's cynical: what is truth] is so close to autograph times as makes little difference -- so, the "no originals" claim is blatantly selectively hyperskeptical. So also you know or should know that we are dealing with in the main scribal errors in MSS typical of any document [where the same variant spelling or mis-spelling 100 times, is 100 variants by the way such are counted], and that there is a whole discipline that compares across 24,000+ MSS and is highly confident of the integrity of the original text. There is no good evidence of organised, continent-wide text tampering, by direct contrast with the Uthman attempted recension of the Quran on Hafsa's copy that left such a noise of protest in the record and variant readings intact down to today that show what was done and that it was done. Ehrman's army of strawmen and sensationalising that exploits our ignorance of the wider context have misled you badly. 5 --> Worse, you pass over in a convenient silence the abundant corroboration of the accuracy of the NT as historical documentation, and that of its provenance in C1; whilst the gnostic works that many are wont to promote nowadays, are equally plainly of C2 and later provenance. That is, the one is eyewitness lifetime and credibly eyewitness based, the other is not -- indeed the plain evidence is that it is a syncretistic accommodation to the vulgarised platonism and the popular magical views of the time. The NT stands out by direct contrast with such views. (And, BTW, speaking of appeal to prejudice on the temper of the times: there is a lot more and a lot more objective evidence of the continued, present day reality of the demonic than you are wont to think. Your evident evolutionary materialistic prejudices are closing your mind.) 6 --> You then compound with a categorical error that directly shows the selective hyperskeptical problem. The boiling point of pure water at sea level is a direct observational fact of the present. History -- by contrast -- is about the past, just as a court trial [crucial to social stability] is about the past. And, we are fully capable of obtaining moral certainty about the past, on testimony, record and supportive evidence of that record. 7 --> What you have done then is two things: (a) implicitly you are holding historical record you would dismiss to the standards of present day observations, and (b) you are INCONSISTENT in your standards of dealing with history. (I suggest you read on standards of evidence on the past, starting here, from Simon Greenleaf, a founding father of the modern theory of evidence. Start with the ancient documents rule.) 8 --> How can I know this last? Simple, science itself relies on historical record for many of its key findings, and to make progress. So, historical standards of evidence cannot neatly be severed from scientific work. So, to imply such a severance, is to be selectively hyperskeptical and inconsistent. 9 --> Going beyond, you are passing over in silence the minimal facts issue, where the majority to the overwhelming consensus of scholarship has come to certain conclusions regarding the NT record -- and notice, I am not here relying on the strawman issue of infallibility or the like that Ehrman likes to set up, just to view them as authentic and credible record -- accepts certain facts that cry out for an adequate explanation. 10 --> Where, the standard skeptical explanations of the past have fallen apart, and the common one today, "visions," is equally impotent in the face of the body of evidence as a whole. (Cf also here.) 11 --> Any way, this excursus on the NT side issue, is about showing the selective hyperskepticism problem you need to address, it is not the main focus. ++++++++ JM, pardon directness, but I think you have some serious rethinking to do. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 22, 2011
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JM: You have posed a target rich environment. I have to be selective. So, first: pardon, but there is simply no comparison between the question of a foundational necessary being to explain the radical contingency of our observed cosmos [start with: it had a beginning -- thus a CAUSE external to it -- and that matter in particular is plainly contingent as a result . . . which you dodged above] and your magical paper clip:
the entire cosmos was sustained by the will of clippy the magic paperclip . . .
Do you have any evidence that paper clips have minds, or cosmos-generating capacity? The observed cosmos itself shows it is not self-explanatory, and the logic of a fine tuned cosmos with a beginning cries out for cogent explanation that requires at its root a necessary being. (Have you worked through the issues tabled here?) And BTW, the presumption that "evolution" will likely equip us -- BTW, itself a major begging of some very big, body-plan origination on functionally specific, complex organisation questions -- to accurately perceive our environment is based on a confusion between pragmatic workability and truth as that which is accurate to reality. The history of science itself shows us that many things that work, even work very well, are not accurate to reality. Grimmer history shows us that ruthless and oppressive might may not make for right, but it often makes for success. In short, you are repeatedly trivialising, creating strawman caricatures that you can dismiss. Going further, the evidence is -- and on your dismissal as a "presumption" have you looked at the 101-level summary here? The real issue in current cosmology is not whether there is that sort of fine balance, it is why . . . -- that the observed cosmos is exquisitely, and in many, many ways, fine-tuned for the existence of C-chemistry, cell-based intelligent life, such as we experience. That implies a functionally specific, complex "wiring diagram" organisation of the physics, parameters and circumstances of the cosmos. As BA is fond of observing, in some cases as fine a tuning as one grain of sand to the observed atomic matter of the cosmos. Your suggested magic paper clip strawman is -- material -- i.e. it does not even begin to compare. And yes, a "magical" paperclip is a religiously loaded view; one loaded with worldview level implications that have significance for our view of the roots of being, and our nature and duties as a consequence. It is no accident that magicians are often villains in our stories, as magic[k] is about the manipulation of occult forces. On selective hyperskepticism, let me observe that radical, global skepticism is even worse. The claim to know that knowledge is not possible -- the key global skeptical claim -- is immediately self-contradictory, and absurd. And to draw an arbitrary datum line between say some point in C13 or so and the deeper past, fails to see tha the same evidential issues and principles apply on both sides of the line. Indeed, nigh on 200 years ago, someone brilliantly parodied the rising skepticsm of that day, by making a spoof argument against the historicity of Napoleon. (IIRC, some actually took it seriously. Someone more recently did a spoof on the hyperskeptical NT criticism and had the paper published in one of those German journals, with all due seriousness, then exposed the spoof. believe it or not, some then still tried to defend the position. I need not draw on the Sokal affair on pomo, and in fact that is not really parallel as there was a violation of trust involved, i.e. authors were expected to be giving serious documents that were implicitly certified as being in good faith.) A better start point for addressing corrosive hyperskepticism is Josiah Royce's: Error exists. For to try to deny this immediately entails giving an example of error. So, it is true, and knowably, undeniably, certainly true on pain of immediate absurdity. It is self-evident. Worldviews that deny or dismiss the possibility of knowing truth beyond a relativistic "true to me or you" are all discredited. That sweeps the table of radical relativism, including radical skepticism and a lot of so-called post- [in fact, ultra-] modernism. So also, truth exists, undeniably and certainly knowable truth. That is, strong form knowledge. But equally, it is a humbling first truth: we may be mistaken about the truth, so we need to be aware of our prone-ness to error. So, we must be open-minded, and critically aware, especially when we practice disciplines (like the sciences) that create or are based on weak form knowledge: warranted, credibly true beliefs that we provisionally accept and trust based on their reliability. Selective hyperskepticism especially may enter at this point, through some form of the Clifford-Sagan blunder: extraordinary claims require ~~extraordinary~~ [ADEQUATE] evidence. Nor, BTW, am I misquoting you. The "no evidence" assertion is a COMMON rhetorical talking point out there. And in your case, the "convincing to me" declaration actually spotlights the selective hyperskepticism: you are implicitly categorising certain claims as requiring "extraordinary" evidence and are ducking your epistemic responsibilities to what you know or should know to moral certainty. You may not use the phrase "no evidence" but you imply that the evidence that is out there can be dismissed as having no bearing on the truth. Indeed, you have set out to triviaslise or discredit it, i.e. subtly reduce it to the status: no evidence. That is, despite such trivialisation and attempted dismissals, there are some things that have adequate warrant that we are irresponsible to not act as though they were true. To give non-controversial illustrations, medical findings are not certain beyond all doubt, or even in many cases beyond reasonable doubt. But, we are morally responsible to act on them. Similarly, it is not provable beyond all doubt or challenge that other people around us have minds of their own, or have rights, or are owed duties of care, but there is sufficient evidence that we have a responsibility to act as though these conclusions on good warrant, were true. Just ask any tort lawyer, or a rape defendant -- consent being a volitional, mental act. Further to this, the issue of our being social animals is besides the point of moral duty. A wolf-pack are social, and so is a gang. Gangs cooperate, to steal, pillage, rape and murder. Moral duty is not traceable to being social, or to personal or group advantage. Just ask the most successful thieves in all history, the imperial age British elites. The very fact that you made such a resort tells us that you have indeed lost the key point and force of ought: duty, especially to those too weak to deter aggression. In short, you are inadvertently revealing the precise amorality that Plato warned against 2,300 years ago. Your evident atheistiacal evolutionary materialism has in it no IS that can bear the weight of OUGHT. And, onlookers should take due note of the implication of that: "ought" is reduced to raw power and/or manipulation, in a radically relativist framework. Might makes right, in short. A grim warning, in light of the history of the past century. Will Hawthorne is apt:
Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [[= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' [[the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces]. (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action . . . [[We see] therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'. For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time. Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument.
In short, evolutionary materialistic atheism is amoral and patently morally absurd. [ . . . ]kairosfocus_{March 22, 2011
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Brent:
What I want to ask you is, what would you consider credible evidence for the existence of God?
A question I'm more than happy to answer. There are innumerable types of evidence that would make me provisionally accept the existence of God, so I'll pick just one type for now. For simplicity's sake I'll list what would convince me of the Christian God. (I can't really say what evidence would convince of 'a' god, a generic undefined God, because without specific claims to test, how would one even go about looking for evidence?) Most Christians agree that God is omniscient, and that he can communicate with humans in some way. Some Christians maintain that they can hear God as an audible voice, but far more would say something like God 'leads' or 'guides' them; at the very least, being omnipotent, if God has an important message to convey, he can do it. Pastors often talk about having God 'speak through them.' Another thing that is nearly universally agreed upon is that God wants everyone to know him and to trust in him. Obviously, accepting the proposition that He exists is a prerequisite for that. Also, God is a personal being, with a will, desires, and ability to think and reason. With those things established, we get to one example of one of the types of evidence I would accept. Here's the simplest way to say it: The standard of evidence I would accept for the existence of God is no more or no less than I would accept for the existence of any real person, with two minor exceptions: Since God is incorporeal in some sense, I would not expect to be able to touch Him or take a blood sample or some such nonsense as that. Also, I would not expect to be able to hear him directly for two reasons: obviously being incorporeal, He would not be able to emit sound waves, and many (but not all) Christians maintain that God mainly speaks to his followers. (being an ex-follower, I would not fit that bill) So essentially, I would be willing to accept slightly less evidence for the existence of God than I would for the existence of a fellow human being, because with the human I would have a reasonable expectation of being able to see them (in at least a photograph if not in person), or if they were in a far away locale, to converse with them on a telephone. So in fairness, I could not demand a different kind of evidence for God then I could demand for a living human (who we'll cal Mr. X) whom I hand no physical access to, and whom I had only one way communication with (I could send messages to him, but could not receive messages directly from him.) But of course, others who knew him could receive the messages. (For the sake of this thought experiment, the channel of communication is completely secure, no one could possibly intercept my message to him.) So the claim is: There is a person, Mr. X, who exists, can receive secure messages from you, who can communicate directly with his associates who you have direct access to, and he has a desire that you believe he exists. So, how would I test that particular claim? Easy. I could send him a very specific message, one that would be impossible to guess by an outside party. I would then ask those who claim to know him what that message was. If they could recite the message, the existence of Mr. X would be confirmed. If they made excuses as to why Mr. X didn't wan't to be tested, or they said they couldn't hear him because I 'didn't believe', my skepticism would rightfully remain intact. How does this apply to God? Four months back, I used a random number generator to output a series of alphanumeric characters, which I then wrote down and and carefully sealed in manilla coin envelopes, which I keep on my person at all times. (I have three copies, all with different sequences) I mixed them up, so I don't know which folder contains which sequence; not that I would remember anyways. ( I can't remember my wife's cell phone number, let alone a random string of characters.) So, since God is omniscient He knows what is written in each folder, and no one else does, including me. (not even deep in my subconscious) A Christian who is in close relationship should be able to receive the sequence from God, and recite it to me because God, if He exists, can read my mind, and therefore would know that this truly would convince me. (That's why I went through the trouble of preparing the envelopes in the first place; I thought long an hard about what would convince me) He therefore would have no reason not to participate. I usually get two immediate responses. One is that it is somehow and 'unreasonable' expectation. I don't buy this; as I pointed out, it is actually less evidence than I would require for the existence of another human. The second is that "God doesn't like to be tested" to which I usually reply: "You mean the God of the Bible? That God? The one who in Malachi 3:10 says:
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.
Now, if you weren't talking about the God of the Bible (the primary deity of interest here, it seems) then that's a different conversation. Is my standard of evidence unreasonable? If so, why? If not, would anyone care to post the characters God has revealed to them? I'll record the opening of the envelope and post it for all to see. Anyway, that's one type of evidence that would convince me.jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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jurassicmac, I think your arguments against the reliability of the Bible manuscripts is quite flawed and a good example of selective hyperskepticism, whereby you hold those manuscripts to standards that are not reasonable, and accept as invalidating easily reconciled "problems". But, I don't want to deal with that here. I only say that to put it on the table, possibly for later. What I want to ask you is, what would you consider credible evidence for the existence of God?Brent_{March 21, 2011
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kairosfocus:
As to the “no evidence” dodge, that has been repeatedly addressed and linked on above. This talking point is a diagnostic sign of selective hyperskepticism, which is self-referentially incoherent and absurd.
You are misquoting me. I've never said that there is 'no evidence' only that there is no evidence that is convincing to me personally. To say that I'm "selectively" hyperskeptical, it seems to me like you would need to know some of the other things I'm skeptical about, and the degree to which I'm skeptical about them. Perhaps you're psychic like Barry, but if not, how do you know I'm not consistently skeptical? What other areas do I not apply the same amount of skepticism, more importantly, how did you know before calling my skepticism 'selective'?jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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kairosfocus:
I suggest to you that such worldview level issues are profoundly and inescapably religious, one way of another. We may reject God, but not without consequences for our worldview that do in fact have a functionally and substantially equivalent role in our lives. In particular, we are never simply “without belief in God.” the matter is too close to the heart of what we are.
If I were to suggest to you that the entire cosmos was sustained by the will of clippy the magic paperclip, that would obviously be 'worldview level that was profoundly and inescapably religious.' Is not believing that the entire cosmos is sustained by the will of clippy the magic paperclip equally religious? If it is, then isn't every every single possible idea, or rejection thereof, religious? I'm starting to get the impression that you guys don't like the word 'religious'; you use it almost as a slander: "You call me religious, but you are too!"jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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F/N: on a 2,300 year old challenge to evolutionary materialist accounts of reality, by Plato: ____________________ >> [[The avant garde philosophers, teachers and artists c. 400 BC] say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art [[ i.e. techne], which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial . . . They say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only . . . . [[T]hese people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke's views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic "every man does what is right in his own eyes" chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny; here, too, Plato hints at the career of Alcibiades], and not in legal subjection to them . . . >> ____________________ Cf discussion here. Please, think afresh.kairosfocus_{March 21, 2011
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Kairosfocus:
a: what is the observed universe, and whence cometh it, given that it credibly had a beginning?
I don't pretend to know how the universe got here. But I must point out one oddity in your question. We have every reason to think that time, space, and matter arose simultaneously in the big bang.; there was no 'time' before the big bang. That being the case, it may not make sense to ask what happened 'before' the big bang, since 'before' is a time-dependent word.
b: how did it come to be fine tuned to support C-chemistry, cell based, intelligent life?
I don't pretend to know why the universe is the way it is. But this question has an oddity as well; you're assuming from the outset that the universe is 'fined tuned'. The top minds in physics don't yet understand enough about the laws and constants to make comments about their relationships to each other; for all we know, given the value for the strength of gravity, it may be that the electromagnetic force, and strong & weak nuclear forces, etc could not possibly have been other way. With a sample size of one, it's hard to make informed speculations about ways that universes could possibly be, but that doesn't seem to keep people from trying.
c: if there is no God, why do we find ourselves morally governed, and what is the is that GROUNDS ought — or, does ought reduce to “THE HIGHEST RIGHT IS MIGHT?
To divide your question into two parts: Why do we find ourselves with a moral instict? Because in social animals, cooperation brings with it a selective advantage. It's the same reason we have an instinct to eat, an instinct to mate, and an instinct to avoid pain: it is advantageous in our case to have such instincts. The second part of your question illustrates the fallacy of argumentum ad consequentiam and thus is not a valid objection.
d: If there is no ought, but we find ourselves deluded that we are subject to its force, what does this imply about the general credibility of mind to form any belief worth trusting and acting on? e: Likewise, what then is our significance as beings in our world, personally and collectively?
Also mostly an argumentum ad consequentiam, you assume that everyone is 'deluded that we are subject to "ought's" force.' (whatever 'ought's force" means in this context) If you're asking what reason there is to think that evolution would have equipped us to gather 'truth', then that's simple: having the ability to accurately model our environment, i.e, to have beliefs and conceptions about reality that are closer to being 'true' than to 'not true' is abundantly advantageous for survival. The last sentence of your question is again, an argument from consequences. Hope that clarifies things. Thanks for the questions.jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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JM: belief/disbelief in God -- remember, the necessary being, intelligent, powerful and skilled enough to make a cosmos fine tuned for C-chemistry, intelligent, morally governed life -- is a worldview foundational belief, with all sorts of implications for the rest of one's thought, life and community. For instance:
a: what is the observed universe, and whence cometh it, given that it credibly had a beginning? b: how did it come to be fine tuned to support C-chemistry, cell based, intelligent life? c: if there is no God, why do we find ourselves morally governed, and what is the is that GROUNDS ought -- or, does ought reduce to "THE HIGHEST RIGHT IS MIGHT? d: If there is no ought, but we find ourselves deluded that we are subject to its force, what does this imply about the general credibility of mind to form any belief worth trusting and acting on? e: Likewise, what then is our significance as beings in our world, personally and collectively?
(I suggest to you that such worldview level issues are profoundly and inescapably religious, one way of another. We may reject God, but not without consequences for our worldview that do in fact have a functionally and substantially equivalent role in our lives. In particular, we are never simply "without belief in God." the matter is too close to the heart of what we are.) The comparatives you have tried to put up show that you are refusing to accept this plain matter, indeed that you are begging the question and trivialising the questions that directly hinge on the issue of whether or not God is. As to the "no evidence" dodge, that has been repeatedly addressed and linked on above. This talking point is a diagnostic sign of selective hyperskepticism, which is self-referentially incoherent and absurd. All, detailed in the linked. Please, think again. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 21, 2011
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Barry:
The books of the New Testament are the most highly authenticated ancient manuscripts in existence by several orders of magnitude. Sorry, that dog won’t hunt.
Barry, I agree with you 100% that the books of the New Testament are the most highly authenticated ancient documents by an order of magnitude. I'm not sure how you got that I was arguing against that. But "best, compared to others" does not mean "good." Again I point you to the uncontested 200,000 textual variants in the manuscripts. (there are more textual variants in greek manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.) It's like saying that Spiderman is an order of magnitude more plausible than Superman or the Hulk, therefore Spiderman is plausible. If we compare the Bible to all books, not just books written as long ago as it was, then we can say the Book of Mormon is an order of magnitude more attested than the New Testament. (It was, after all, written recently, well after the invention of the printing press.) If 'well-attestend-ness compared to other books' is our criteria for determining reliability, would you consider the Book of Mormon more reliable than the Bible?
I am sure you have your reasons for saying you reject the existence of God. None of them is warranted by lack of evidence.
Again with the declarations of my inner mind. I find that humorously amazing.
Do you know why the Bible says “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God’”? Because everyone, without exception, knows there is a God. And only a fool proclaims to be false that which he knows to be true.
And again with quoting what someone wrote 3,500-ish years ago to prove your point.
Despite your protestations to the contrary, sir, you know there is a God, and I am sorry you continue to twist yourself into linguistic knots in an ever more feverish attempt to deny it.
I've been waiting for that shoe to drop. I'm just incredulous that someone could make a claim like this with a straight face. I can understand perfectly how an intelligent person can be a Christian. (many are) I can understand perfectly how an intelligent person can be an ID proponent (many are) But I can't for the life of me understand how an intelligent person can honestly believe that everyone actually agrees with them in secret, but for some inexplicable reason denies it, and even argues against it. That's the most outlandish conspiracy theory I've ever heard. You're doing a disservice to your comrades here when you post such nonsense.
Have you ever stopped to think why you are so evangelically zealous in proclaiming that you DON’T believe something. After all, you say you don’t believe the moon landings were faked, but you don’t spend hour upon hour on the internet defending your lack of belief in fake moon landings.
For the nth time, you're doing nothing less than claiming to be psychic. How in the world do you know I don't spend hours debating the moon landing? The least you could do is throw a 'probably' in there somewhere. As a matter of fact, I have discussed it the moon landing at length on some conspiracy theory boards, and It's very possible that the amount of time adds up to hours. But the main difference is that a large number of people don't take claims that the moon landing was faked seriously. If a vast majority of people did, and wanted to make legislative decisions based on such a belief, you can bet I'd be discussing it more. I must bring to your attention that the only reason I posted on this particular article is because I was (indirectly) accused of having a religious belief in an area in which I don't. I am simply trying to explain my position, not be 'evangelically zealous' in proclaiming my disbelief. I believe that when someone tells me I believe something, I have the right to inform them that I don't. (although it seems odd that I would have to continually defend it)
Let me suggest that the reason may have to do with the fact that more than anyone else, you are trying to convince yourself of something you know, deep down, is untrue, and it takes a lot of effort to beat the drum so loud you cannot hear your own conscience. I am truly sorry for you sir.
I simply can't imagine believing, let alone confessing in public, that I harbor a belief that those who disagree with me, actually agree with me in secret, but are lying about disagreeing with me. That's just preposterous, I must respectfully say.jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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Onlookers, I commend to you GEM's links in [80].Barry Arrington_{March 21, 2011
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Jurassicmac, Re [82-86] The books of the New Testament are the most highly authenticated ancient manuscripts in existence by several orders of magnitude. Sorry, that dog won’t hunt. I am sure you have your reasons for saying you reject the existence of God. None of them is warranted by lack of evidence. Do you know why the Bible says “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God’”? Because everyone, without exception, knows there is a God. And only a fool proclaims to be false that which he knows to be true. You understand that the universe cannot account for its own existence. You have asked yourself the question: “Why is there something instead of nothing,” and you know there is only one answer to that question. Despite your protestations to the contrary, sir, you know there is a God, and I am sorry you continue to twist yourself into linguistic knots in an ever more feverish attempt to deny it. Have you ever stopped to think why you are so evangelically zealous in proclaiming that you DON’T believe something. After all, you say you don’t believe the moon landings were faked, but you don’t spend hour upon hour on the internet defending your lack of belief in fake moon landings. Let me suggest that the reason may have to do with the fact that more than anyone else, you are trying to convince yourself of something you know, deep down, is untrue, and it takes a lot of effort to beat the drum so loud you cannot hear your own conscience. I am truly sorry for you sir.Barry Arrington_{March 21, 2011
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Correction: In my 4th paragraph in [82], the sentence should read: "but to call a lack of a belief a belief itself is a stretch,"jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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Barry:
For example, jurassicmac says he would believe in God if here were presented with convincing evidence. Sad. We have all witnessed him reject evidence after evidence after evidence. No evidence is convincing if one has decided in advance to rule all evidence out.
For reference, what evidence of God's existence did you present to me, let alone what evidence did I reject? If I missed, it I apologize. perhaps you could summarize for me, or at least give me the post numbers and/or links. And to be fair, I must point out that I said I would change my mind If I were presented with convincing evidence, not merely 'evidence'. I've seen evidence that the moon landing was faked, that 911 was an inside job, and that Mormonism is true. I have not seen convincing evidence for any of those 3. For example, "because the Bible says," is not convincing evidence, unless it could be demonstrated why the bible should be considered infallible. (not merely inerrant; which it doesn't seem to be either.) thanks.jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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Barry [79] 31And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Now in this parable, the two characters are presumably many, many, generations removed from Moses and the prophets. So essentially, what the speaker is saying is: "If they don't believe ancient stories that can not be directly confirmed, why would we expect that they would change their mind with direct, tangible, first hand evidence?" That's setting the bar kind of low, I think. The point that the story is trying to make is that belief in the absence of, or in contrast to direct evidence (i.e., faith) is a commendable thing. It is not, at least if the goal is to ascertain truth.
Jesus rose from the dead. Yet our atheist friends say the evidence is not good enough, thus proving verse 31.
Jesus died nearly 20 centuries ago. We know this via conflicting accounts to which we don't have the original documents, accounts that we know for a fact have been modified over time. (even Bart Ehrman's most vociferous opponents concede that there are over 200,000 textual variants in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.) Surely you must realize why some view the claim that Jesus rose from the dead with a bit more skepticism than the claim that water boils a 212 °F? Especially seeing as how 100% of the evidence comes from a collection of ancient documents that otherwise make demonstrably false claims about reality (communicable diseases are caused by evil spirits, not germs; epilepsy is cause by evil spirits, not neurological conditions, etc)jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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Barry, here is what I said at 32, reposted for convenience. Barry:
The issue is not whether belief in God is reasonable or unreasonable. The issue is whether belief in God is a religious belief. By definition, it is. Accordingly, atheism is a religious belief.
Barry, let’s take your criteria for labeling a position a ‘religious’ belief and see if it holds in any other scenario: “The issue is whether belief that my toaster is God is a religious belief. By definition, it is. Accordingly, not believing that my toaster is God is a religious belief.” Err…not so much for that one. Let’s restructure it: Claim: My TV is an archangel in the form of a TV. Response: I do not believe your TV is an archangel in the form of a TV. Is the response a religious claim by default? Nope. Now, the reason for rejecting the claim is important. If the response were “I do not believe your TV is an archangel because I happen to believe that archangels always appear as forks, not as TVs,” then yes, that would be a religious argument. If, however, the response was “I do not believe your TV is an archangel because you have not provided sufficient evidence that your claim is true,” then that would obviously not be a religious argument. Since pantheist believe everything is God, then by your criteria Barry, saying that I don’t believe my iPod is God is a religious statement. By your criteria, any statement is a religious statement, and like I said, that strips the term of any meaning whatsoever.jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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Barry Arrington [73]
jurassicmac in [72] continues to twist himself into linguistic knots trying to argue that a word that contains the root word “God” is not a word about God (i.e, a religious word).
Barry, my comment at 32 was stuck in moderation over the weekend, perhaps you missed it. By your criteria, every belief is a religious belief. You have just provided another example. Let's apply your reasoning to any other scenario to see if it holds up: Claim: Breaking a mirror causes 7 years of bad luck. Response: I don't believe that breaking a mirror causes 7 years of bad luck. Now, we see that the response contains the words 'bad luck', words that are superstitious. Since it contains superstitious words, the response is therefore also a superstitious belief. Accordingly, if someone describes themselves as 'asupertitious' {meaning without superstitions] they are tying themselves in a knot if they try to argue that a word containing the root word 'superstitious' is not a word about superstitions (i.e. a superstitious word) Now, reading back over my posts, I do agree that i should have been more explicit in defending my statement that atheism isn't a religious belief. Sure, it's a philosophy, a worldview, but to call a lack of a belief is a stretch, but let's say I give you that for sake of argument. It still isn't a 'religious' belief any more than not believing my toaster is God is a 'religious' belief.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. And I might add that the most pathetic lie is the lie told to oneself. For example, jurassicmac says he would believe in God if here were presented with convincing evidence. Sad. We have all witnessed him reject evidence after evidence after evidence. No evidence is convincing if one has decided in advance to rule all evidence out.
Barry, what you're doing here is making proclamations about the inner workings of a total stranger's mind, then accusing the stranger of lying about his own thoughts. Isn't that a little preposterous if you think about it? I was a devout Christian for almost 30 years because I thought the evidence pointed in that direction. A few things were brought to my attention regarding those lines of evidence, and I no longer find them convincing. Now, I fully admit that I could very well be mistaken in my evaluation of those lines of evidence. But that does not mean that my belief, or lack thereof, is not contingent on evidence.jurassicmac_{March 21, 2011
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OOPS: Forgot to link Plato's parable of the cave and the onward video. Here, please.kairosfocus_{March 21, 2011
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Mr Arrington: So it is. (Cf. my remarks on the minimal facts evidence here.) of course, all of this is somewhat of a tangent to the main theme of this blog, on specifics of substance. But, the underlying problem of en-darkenment of mind through that closed-minded question begging selective hyperskepticism that imagines itself brilliant, educated and enlightened, is central. Indeed, astonishingly, being "skeptical" is seen as an intellectual virtue today. Not so, to be critically aware and insist on adequate warrant for knowledge claims is one thing, and a good one. But, to give oneself over to question-begging, self-referentially incoherent, closed minded selective hyperskepticism that does not spot the fatal inconsistency in "extraordinary claims [by my lights] require ~~extraordinary~~ [adequate] evidence," is utterly another. How utterly, inadvertently sadly revealing and telling is the now constant refrain "there is NO evidence . . . " Perhaps, such should take a pause and look here, from Plato, on false enlightenment. (Do, take time to watch the long-sought video.) Then, may another Dominical saying may strike sparks on the tinder of our minds and hearts:
Matthew 6:21-23 [AMP] 21For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 22The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your entire body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is unsound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the very light in you [your [a]conscience] is darkened, how dense is that darkness! Footnotes: Matthew 6:23 Hermann Cremer, Biblico-Theological Lexicon.
[Jesus was quite the intellectual virtues and duties approach epistemologist, nuh?] GEM of TKI PS: I have now updated the always linked, to ver 1.7.1a with the working links. Thanks.kairosfocus_{March 21, 2011
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Brent and GEM, I am reminded of Jesus' parable of the Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. In hell the rich man asked that Lazarus would be sent to testify to his brothers: 27Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: 28For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. 29Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. 30And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. 31And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Jesus rose from the dead. Yet our atheist friends say the evidence is not good enough, thus proving verse 31. Barry Arrington_{March 21, 2011
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Brent: Jesus is spotlighting selective hyperskepticism and resulting closed mindedness. He was even more explicit in Jn 8:
Jn 8:43Why do you misunderstand what I say? It is because you are unable to hear what I am saying. [You cannot bear to listen to My message; your ears are shut to My teaching.] . . . . 45But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me [do not trust Me, do not rely on Me, or adhere to Me] . . . . 47Whoever is of God listens to God. [Those who belong to God hear the words of God.] This is the reason that you do not listen [to those words, to Me]: because you do not belong to God and are not of God or in harmony with Him. [AMP]
If one is not open to the message of the prophets, then one will not be open to a key sign of their prophecies being fulfilled, and will instead be willing to go along with a manufactured dismissal. Such as: while the guards slept -- with one eye open? -- the body was stolen by the 'fraidy puss disciples! The OT simply starts from the presumption that the reports of credible patriarchs and prophets are true, that they walked with God and saw his hand in power. It was the history of the nation, even as the visions and resulting amazing feats of Joan of Arc -- and her subsequent betrayal and shameful imprisonment, kangaroo court trial and execution by the English as a "witch" -- are foundational to French history. The Catholic Encyclopedia, as just linked, is devastating:
It was at the age of thirteen and a half, in the summer of 1425, that Joan first became conscious of that manifestation, whose supernatural character it would now be rash to question, which she afterwards came to call her "voices" or her "counsel." . . . . Joan was always reluctant to speak of her voices. She said nothing about them to her confessor, and constantly refused, at her trial, to be inveigled into descriptions of the appearance of the saints and to explain how she recognized them. None the less, she told her judges: "I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you." Great efforts have been made by rationalistic historians, such as M. Anatole France, to explain these voices as the result of a condition of religious and hysterical exaltation which had been fostered in Joan by priestly influence, combined with certain prophecies current in the countryside of a maiden from the bois chesnu (oak wood), near which the Fairy Tree was situated, who was to save France by a miracle. But the baselessness of this analysis of the phenomena has been fully exposed by many non-Catholic writers. There is not a shadow of evidence to support this theory of priestly advisers coaching Joan in a part, but much which contradicts it. Moreover, unless we accuse the Maid of deliberate falsehood, which no one is prepared to do, it was the voices which created the state of patriotic exaltation, and not the exaltation which preceded the voices. Her evidence on these points is clear . . . . No words can adequately describe the disgraceful ingratitude and apathy of Charles and his advisers in leaving the Maid to her fate. If military force had not availed, they had prisoners like the Earl of Suffolk in their hands, for whom she could have been exchanged. Joan was sold by John of Luxembourg to the English for a sum which would amount to several hundred thousand dollars in modern money. There can be no doubt that the English, partly because they feared their prisoner with a superstitious terror, partly because they were ashamed of the dread which she inspired, were determined at all costs to take her life. They could not put her to death for having beaten them, but they could get her sentenced as a witch and a heretic.
And of course, that is exactly what the English leaders did. To their everlasting shame. But, that only reveals the stoniness of the closed mind and the hardened heart. Goingt back, in the days of the OT, the big problem was with those who would promote real or imaginary earth and sky bound spirits or heroes to higher status and then use idols and idolatrous rituals in their worship. The idea that one could seriously look around and entertain the notion that there is no God, was seen as utter pathological folly beyond even bothering to argue. When in the diaspora and then the era of C1 missions, the ancient forms of evolutionary materialism were doubtless encountered alongside the more prevalent idolatry, the apostle Paul observed: __________________ >>Rom 1:18 . . . God's [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative. 19For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them. 20For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification],(B) 21Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. But instead they became futile and [c]godless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves]. 23And by them the glory and majesty and excellence of the immortal God were exchanged for and represented by images, resembling mortal man and birds and beasts and reptiles. [NB: in the old days, idols in temples and on street corners, but many icons of evolutionary materialism in our day seen in museums, on TV or PC screens, in textbooks and popular magazines, etc, would fit precisely under this label] 24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their [own] hearts to sexual impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin], 25Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever! Amen (so be it).(C) >> ___________________ Immoral and amoral disintegration of community is said here to be a consequence of rebellion against God, including its sexual aspects. In addition, the evidence pointing to God as author of creation -- from the world without and our minds and consciences within -- is held to be self-evident; i.e. to reject it is to immediately land in such patent absurdity that one knows or should know better, there is no excuse. The incoherence of amorality is one form of this, we cannot consistently live as amoral creatures, and admitted immorality implies a moral order, which in turn points to a foundational lawgiver for the cosmos. Protestations of brilliant informed skepticism to the contrary notwithstanding, these are held to be self-warranting on pain of absurdity. Dismissive objections reflect, rather, en-darkened minds and consciences. So, the question now becomes, is this picture painted by the apostle true? (My response is here on, in light of here on.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 21, 2011
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Muramasa: Actually, I am speaking of the longstanding Appendix D to his -- peer reviewed -- Wiley textbook on Differential Equations, in which he applied the knowledge to the particular case of those involved in the second law of thermodynamics, much in the context I discussed in my appendix. Ah, yes, Copernic search to the rescue, here it is now: "Can anything happen in an open system?" Enjoy. Money quote: _________________ >> It is a well-known prediction of the second law that, in a closed system, every type of order is unstable and must eventually decrease, as everything tends toward more probable (more random) states: Not only will carbon and temperature distributions become more random (more uniform), but the performance of all electronic devices will deteriorate, not improve. Natural forces, such as corrosion, erosion, fire, and explosions, do not create order, they destroy it. The second law is all about probability; it uses probability at the microscopic level to predict macroscopic change: The reason carbon distributes itself more and more uniformly in an insulated solid is, that is what the laws of probability predict, when diffusion alone is operative. The reason natural forces may turn a spaceship, or a TV set, or a computer into a pile of rubble but not vice versa is also probability. Of all the possible arrangements atoms could take, only a very small percentage could fly to the moon and back, or receive pictures and sound from the other side of the Earth, or add, subtract, multiply, and divide real numbers with high accuracy. The discovery that life on Earth developed through evolutionary “steps”, coupled with the observation that mutations and natural selection—like other natural forces—can cause (minor) change, is widely accepted in the scientific world as proof that natural selection—alone among all natural forces—can create order out of disorder, and even design human brains with human consciousness. Only the layman seems to see the problem with this logic. [NB: allusion tot he fable of the Emperor and his new clothes] In a recent Mathematical Intelligencer article [Sewell 2000], after outlining the specific reasons why it is not reasonable to attribute the major steps in the development of life to natural selection, I asserted that the idea that the four fundamental forces of physics alone could re-arrange the fundamental particles of Nature into spaceships, nuclear power plants, and computers, connected to laser printers, CRTs, keyboards, and the Internet, appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics in a spectacular way. Anyone who has made such an argument is familiar with the standard reply: The Earth is an open system, and order can increase in an open system, as long as it is “compensated” somehow by a comparable or greater decrease outside the system. S. Angrist and L. Hepler, for example, in Order and Chaos [Angrist and Hepler 1967], write: “In a certain sense the development of civilization may appear contradictory to the second law... Even though society can effect local reductions in entropy, the general and universal trend of entropy increase easily swamps the anomalous but important efforts of civilized man. Each localized, man-made or machine-made entropy decrease is accompanied by a greater increase in entropy of the surroundings, thereby maintaining the required increase in total entropy.” According to this reasoning, then, the second law does not prevent scrap metal from reorganizing itself into a computer in one room, as long as two computers in the next room are rusting into scrap metal—and the door is open. A closer look at equation D.5, which holds not only for thermal entropy but for the “entropy” associated with any other substance that diffuses, shows that this argument, which goes unchallenged in the scientific literature, is based on a misunderstanding of the second law. Equation D.5 does not simply say that entropy cannot decrease in a closed system, it also says that in an open system, entropy cannot decrease faster than it is exported through the boundary, because the boundary integral there represents the rate that entropy is exported across the boundary: Notice that the integrand is the outward heat flux divided by absolute temperature. (That this boundary integral represents the rate that entropy is exported seems to have been noticed by relatively few people [e.g., Dixon 1975, p. 202], probably because the isotropic case is usually assumed and so the numerator is written as ?K[dU/dn, d's being curly] , and in this form the conclusion is not as obvious.) Stated another way, the order in an open system cannot increase faster than it is imported through the boundary. According to D.4, the thermal order in a system can decrease in two different ways—it can be converted to disorder (first integral term) or it can be exported through the boundary (boundary integral term). It can increase in only one way: by importation through the boundary. Similarly, the increase in “carbon order” in an open system cannot be greater than the carbon order imported through the boundary, and the increase in “chromium order” cannot be greater than the chromium order imported through the boundary, and so on. The above analysis was published in my reply “Can ANYTHING Happen in an Open System?” [Sewell 2001] to critics of my original Mathematical Intelli-gencer article. In these simple examples, I assumed nothing but heat conduction or diffusion was going on; but for more general situations, I offered the tautology that “if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is closed, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable.” The fact that order is disappearing in the next room does not make it any easier for computers to appear in our room—unless this order is disappearing into our room, and then only if it is a type of order that makes the appearance of computers not extremely improbable, for example, computers. Importing thermal order will make the temperature distribution less random, and importing carbon order will make the carbon distribution less random, but neither makes the formation of computers more probable. What happens in a closed system depends on the initial conditions; what happens in an open system depends on the boundary conditions as well. As I wrote in Sewell [2001], “order can increase in an open system, not because the laws of probability are suspended when the door is open, but simply because order may walk in through the door...If we found evidence that DNA, auto parts, computer chips, and books entered through the Earth’s atmosphere at some time in the past, then perhaps the appearance of humans, cars, computers, and encyclopedias on a previously barren planet could be explained without postulating a violation of the second law here (it would have been violated somewhere else!). But if all we see entering is radiation and meteorite fragments, it seems clear that what is entering through the boundary cannot explain the increase in order observed here.” >> __________________ My own analysis is that Sewell is correct. Mere injection of raw matter and/or energy does not explain counter-flow, constructive work based transformation in accordance with a Wicken "wiring diagram" specifying function. (Cf my remarks here at UD and my more extended discussion here in my always linked briefing note -- cf my handle.) As for the recently rejected paper, that was plainly a political move, so I would not wave that around like a flag were I in your shoes. It says a lot more about what is wrong with contemporary academia than about the actual state on the merits. FYI, there were also a couple of earlier articles in Mathematical Intelligencer. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 21, 2011
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Hmmm . . . Regarding my previous @75, was Jesus teaching us that belief in a Creator God was a properly basic belief, and that if one can't, or won't, see that, that they won't accept even Jesus rising from the dead??? Was the former quote from Matthew only referring to the deity of Jesus, and the second referring to, first, a basic belief in the reality of God, without which the resurrection couldn't be accepted??? I'd never thought of it that way, and it seems hard to imagine Jews of that time not believing in God. Any thoughts anyone?Brent_{March 20, 2011
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Barry @73, Two things. One, of course, we can say also to the atheist, alright, I'll accept the meaning of atheism as you assert it and say that it only means without God. Fine. But, atheists are those who affirm that atheism is true and accurately describes the universe to be without God, so atheists are, in fact, asserting that God does not exist. Two, one must ask the atheist who claims that he/she would be open to evidence while refusing any and all evidence, what kind of evidence they would accept. It can be pointed out, at least from Christianity's point of view, that Jesus was asked to do the very things that would supposedly convince skeptics, and He said plainly that He would only do so much---which was a lot, to be sure---and no more, to convince people of who he was and is.
"A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed." -Matthew 16:4
Jesus didn't say He wouldn't give a sign, but that He wouldn't give more than the resurrection. If one won't accept that, they won't accept anything. But the resurrection confirmation is also tied to Moses and the prophets.
"And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." -Luke 16:31
Brent_{March 20, 2011
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I thought that Applied Mathematics Letters had posted a brief note on the retraction, but I can't find it. Is suppose that there are several reasons that the paper was pulled. Maybe it had been posted as part of a rapid publication process and on further review was found lacking. Maybe the paper was found to be little more than rehashing of prior works, and lacking originality, it was retracted. Or maybe the Darwinist cabal threatened the editors with excommunication if they didn't pull the paper. Perhaps someone who knows Dr. Sewell personally could contact him and get some more information.Muramasa_{March 20, 2011
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"Atheism" from the Greek: "a" (without) and "theos" (God). jurassicmac in [72] continues to twist himself into linguistic knots trying to argue that a word that contains the root word "God" is not a word about God (i.e, a religious word). There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. And I might add that the most pathetic lie is the lie told to oneself. For example, jurassicmac says he would believe in God if here were presented with convincing evidence. Sad. We have all witnessed him reject evidence after evidence after evidence. No evidence is convincing if one has decided in advance to rule all evidence out.Barry Arrington_{March 20, 2011
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Clive Hayden:
No, atheism is the positive belief that there is no God.
Oxford Dictionary: atheist: a person who does not believe in the existence of God or gods. Dictionary.com: atheist: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings. Wikipedia: Atheism is commonly defined as the position that there are no deities. It can also mean the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. A broader definition is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. We could post definitions all day. I'm actually amused to have people tell me what I believe so often. I lack the belief that God exists. I am not certain that He doesn't. My position is atheistic, not agnostic. I do not believe that God exists, currently. If I were met with convincing evidence that He existed, I would reverse my position instantly.jurassicmac_{March 20, 2011
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"there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems." John Ross, Chemical and Engineering News, 7 July 1980 "...the quantity of entropy generated locally cannot be negative irrespective of whether the system is isolated or not." Arnold Sommerfel, Thermodynamics And Statistical Mechanics, p.155 Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology." Charles J. Smith - Biosystems, Vol.1, p259.bornagain77_{March 20, 2011
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