Humanist philosopher James Croft goes after Steve Meyer’s Return of God Hypothesis

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 23, 2021

Books of interest, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, theism}

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But in an interesting, traditional way (no Cancel Culture, no weirdness, no hysterics):

James Croft is with the Humanist Community at Harvard:

It was sponsored by the group Christian Heritage in Cambridge, England. The conversation is very genial but Dr. Croft offers a strong and aggressive critique about the nature of abductive inferences, and more. His three main points are what he calls the “Background Knowledge Problem,” the “Fallacy of Suppressed Evidence,” and that, as he sees it, the “Totality of Evidence Favors Naturalism.” I would say Meyer responds to these handily. But it was helpful to see him do so.
Croft is charming as an interlocutor, and he did his homework. He even read Steve’s Cambridge PhD thesis. He absorbed the case that Meyer makes in Return of the God Hypothesis and while accepting the science (just for the sake of argument!), he doesn’t concede the philosophy, even as he speaks its language.
David Klinghoffer, “A Philosopher Takes on Meyer’s God Hypothesis” at Evolution News and Science Today

Comments

Actually alien intelligence is a perfectly good explanation for the genome, the problem is you run into Richard Dawkins fallacious argument where it becomes who created the creator This is a fallacy and all it does is put an additional caboose on the train of explanations they keep appearing Edwards Fesser’s goes into great detail on this and I think he’s excellent reference when it pertains the first and final causes But if aliens created us it still means evolution was wrong in our origin so that would make it that we were both right for the wrong reasonsAaronS1978_{June 26, 2021
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Bornagain77/27
Seversky, you, i.e. atheists, are the ones plugging naturalistic explanations into every gap that exists where no naturalistic explanation is even plausible. i.e. Origin of the Universe, Origin of Life, Origin of consciousness. etc.. etc.. The hypocrisy of your ‘gap’ accusation is literally dripping off every word you write.
Yes, "Naturalistic explanations" - plural. Science is willing to try out any number of different explanations to try and find the best one. We don't just plug in our preferred god and say 'There! Done and dusted!'
For instance, you claim that the ‘huge amount of information’ in genomes came from a purely naturalistic origin. Yet no one knows of any naturalistic processes ever creating any non-trivial amounts of information. Much less creating ‘huge amounts’ of information.
Genomes contain huge amounts of information. We know genomes can be changed over time by naturalistic process. Whatever some people want to believe, we have no equivalent evidence for their preferred god or its handiwork so it's a reasonable inference that it arose through naturalistic processes. Of course, we might all be wrong but that's the nature of human knowledge, it's just not as certain as we'd all like it to be but we just have to live with that uncertainty.
Only intelligence has ever been shown to be capable of generating ‘huge amounts’ of information. Yet you plugged some unknown naturalistic explanation into the ‘gap’ anyway. And insinuated that the matter is settled.
Only human intelligence has been shown to be capable of generating huge amounts of information but we're pretty sure we did not design the genome. So either it was designed by some alien intelligence or it arose through naturalistic processes. At this time, we have no evidence of the existence of some alien intelligence that could have done it so we are left with nature as the better candidate cause.
You also claim that invoking God as an explanation for, say, the origin of the universe closes off any further naturalistic alternative.
Because clearly that is exactly what it is intended to do by its proponents. It brooks no alternatives. It also fails as an alternative to scientific explanations for the reasons Chuckdarwin stated @30 better than I could:
However, as I discussed in my prior post, importing a supernatural or metaphysical unobservable, unmeasurable entity as the “designer” or cause of natural phenomena explains nothing. As one of my grad professors was fond of saying, there are no mysteries, simply uncontrolled variables. The notion of “God” (whatever that term means), as an independent variable “causing” natural phenomena, is, quite frankly, ridiculous and unhelpful–it has no explanatory power, it cannot be tested, it is not disprovable–it is a placeholder for folks who, like I said before, eschew the hard work of science in favor of useless (but perhaps psychologically comforting) explanations. As H.L. Menken once said, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Seversky_{June 26, 2021
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Sev, inference to design by ART-ifical action is not inference to Go, as has been on the table since Plato in the laws, Bk X. You have been here all along when that was quoted in extenso. You know better. KFkairosfocus_{June 26, 2021
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Jerry, the definition imposed under threat on schools is ideological distortion. KFkairosfocus_{June 26, 2021
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Honestly we just need to be more vocal then people like Chuck D and Sev They will maintain their obnoxious misrepresentation of religion, believers, ID, and even TE because of their biased towards the idea of God It’s literally a waste arguing with them here What needs to happen is we need to be vocal to the lay people so their trash explanations and misrepresentation of us are not the first impression people get First impressions have a tendency to be the foundation of future interpretations This is why new atheism was even a thing It’s false bravado was made believable due to advertising and vocalizationAaronS1978_{June 26, 2021
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chuckdarwin:
Speciation by natural selection
Even YECs accept that. They don't accept macroevolution by means of NS.ET_{June 26, 2021
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Speciation by natural selection
As others have said your comment is incorrect. There are some cases where speciation by natural selection/variation take place and ID fully accepts it.
Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic
Does that apply to forensic scientists.jerry_{June 26, 2021
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Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic ...
You have to be a desperate loser to think that science has to start with a conclusion and force the evidence to fit it. And that is exactly what materialists do. Science, by definition, is limited to REALITY.ET_{June 26, 2021
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seversky:
But watching Christians plug their God into every gap in our scientific knowledge, does.
Right, and scientists plug in artisans and criminals cuz they can't figure out how nature didit. People "plug in" an intelligent designer because the evidence calls for it. Stop blaming others for YOUR miserable failures.ET_{June 26, 2021
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PPS: Institutional entrenchment:
All those involved with science teaching and learning should have a common, accurate view of the nature of science. [--> yes but a question-begging ideological imposition is not an accurate view] Science is characterized by the systematic gathering of information through various forms of direct and indirect observations and the testing of this information by methods including, but not limited to, experimentation [--> correct so far]. The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts [--> evolutionary materialistic scientism is imposed] and the laws and theories related to those [--> i.e. ideologically loaded, evolutionary materialistic] concepts . . . . science, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific methods, explanations, generalizations and products [--> censorship of anything that challenges the imposition; fails to appreciate that scientific methods are studied through logic, epistemology and philosophy of science, which are philosophy not science] . . . . Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science [--> a good point, but fails to see that this brings to bear many philosophical issues], a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations [--> outright ideological imposition and censorship that fetters freedom of responsible thought] supported by empirical evidence [--> the imposition controls how evidence is interpreted and that's why blind watchmaker mechanisms never seen to actually cause FSCO/I have default claim to explain it in the world of life] that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument [--> ideological imposition may hide under a cloak of rationality but is in fact anti-rational], inference, skepticism [--> critical awareness is responsible, selective hyperskepticism backed by ideological censorship is not], peer review [--> a circle of ideologues in agreement has no probative value] and replicability of work . . . . Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic [= evolutionary materialistic scientism is imposed by definition, locking out an unfettered search for the credibly warranted truth about our world i/l/o observational evidence and linked inductive reasoning] methods and explanations and, as such [--> notice, ideological imposition by question-begging definition], is precluded from using supernatural elements [--> sets up a supernatural vs natural strawman alternative when the proper contrast since Plato in The Laws, Bk X, is natural vs artificial] in the production of scientific knowledge. [US NSTA Board, July 2000, definition of the nature of science for education purposes]
kairosfocus_{June 26, 2021
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PS: A classic illustration of the problem:
. . . to put a correct [--> Just who here presume to cornering the market on truth and so demand authority to impose?] view of the universe into people's heads
[==> as in, "we" the radically secularist elites have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge, making "our" "consensus" the yardstick of truth . . . where of course "view" is patently short for WORLDVIEW . . . and linked cultural agenda . . . ]
we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world [--> "explanations of the world" is yet another synonym for WORLDVIEWS; the despised "demon[ic]" "supernatural" being of course an index of animus towards ethical theism and particularly the Judaeo-Christian faith tradition], the demons that exist only in their imaginations,
[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]
and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth
[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]
. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident
[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]
that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]
kairosfocus_{June 26, 2021
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CD, your failure to recognise the more standard spelling [UK] is itself a sign of what is going on. YOUR OWN TEXT ABOVE IS A CASE OF DESIGN SHOWING FUNCTIONALLY SPECIFIC, COMPLEX ORGANISATION AND/OR ASSOCIATED INFORMATION (FSCO/I). Of this phenomenon there are trillions of examples all around, reliably -- there are zero known exceptions once a reasonable complexity threshold such as 500 - 1,000 bits is used -- showing FSCO/I a signature of design once we can observe causal process. This establishes what anywhere else would be called a law of science, but frankly science here goes up against entrenched materialist ideology. It so happens that since 1953 we have known the living cell is replete with coded, string data structure, algorithmic information and associated execution machinery. Your ideological unwillingness to acknowledge reliability of sign, demonstration (try infinite monkeys investigations) of incapacity and more does not change that balance on merits. It's over and the warranted conclusion, cell based life comes from a process of intelligently directed conclusion is solid. KFkairosfocus_{June 26, 2021
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Incorrect Chuck They just don’t Except it as the sole and only explanation. natural selection is not centerstage that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and it doesn’t happenAaronS1978_{June 26, 2021
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#31 "Aside: Point to one finding of science that ID does not accept." Speciation by natural selectionchuckdarwin_{June 26, 2021
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“it is a placeholder for folks who, like I said before, eschew the hard work of science in favor of useless (but perhaps psychologically comforting) explanations” This is the same crap comment atheists make trying to accuse ID of not trying to do real science Again there are plenty of examples of vestigial organs your way of thought are responsible for tossing into the waste ben because you found COMFORT in your explanation when science COULDN’T figure it out. Again a quick example of this is the appendix, no function we don’t use it anymore it’s just an artifact of evolution. (That’s a placeholder explanation because you couldn’t figure it out and it gave you comfort) That was taught for at least 30 years of my life in school and was generally accepted immediately as the explanation for the appendix That is exactly what you were complaining about. No science was done on it for years Because of that explanation Like that’s exactly what you’re complaining about which science is painfully guilty of using evolution as an explanation for something they can’t figure out Jerry Coyne holds that consciousness is nothing more than evolutionary Sprandel It has no function and there’s no need to waste any time trying to figure out the subjective experience And why? Consciousness is probably too hard to figure out and it probably gives him comfort That evolution can create everything that’s amazing and everything that’s bad it’s the ultimate god of gaps There you go, a person that I’m pretty sure you support, and finds his opinion to be intelligent, doesn’t know what the consciousness is, so evolution did it and it has no function we don’t need to study anymore you blame ID and believers for this exact behavior Richard Dawkins did it with junk DNA I mean he wrote an entire f@$king book about it. It’s a lot of trash science packed into one book called the self-gene, Which now has been shot down multiple times because people Did real science. But again evolution was able to explain all that DNA away as junk there was no real need to investigate further and it already given you the answer why 98% of genome i was useless. Which that is now proving to be very untrue What’s even more comical is the when scientists start testing something because they can’t figure out why evolution evolved it multiple times They evoke a design reference, why would evolution (god, designer, me HA) evolve this multiple times if it didn’t have function That’s exactly the philosophy of ID, it wouldn’t exist if it didn’t have function so we have to keep testing it until we find the function This is one of the primary arguments from the camp of evolutionist AGAINST those that feel the consciousness is epiphenominal If the consciousness didn’t have function it would never evolved over and over again And if it didn’t have function the organism would lose it. Troglobites are a good example of this This was also the philosophy that motivated people to start testing the appendix again to see if it had any real function And if you had any understanding about the philosophy of ID you would’ve read the comments of “it wouldn’t exist unless it had some form of function” This is a tenant that this site and multiple other ID sites push every single day But I forget evolutionist get to pick and choose what they want to believe in and criticize others for believing somethings they don’t. then wonder off pretending that they’re really smart my badAaronS1978_{June 26, 2021
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as an independent variable “causing” natural phenomena, is, quite frankly, ridiculous and unhelpful–it has no explanatory power, it cannot be tested, it is not disprovable–it is a placeholder for folks who, like I said before, eschew the hard work of science in favor of useless (but perhaps psychologically comforting) explanations
Again this is begging the question and a logical fallacy. Aside: Point to one finding of science that ID does not accept.jerry_{June 26, 2021
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#24 "CD, design is a commonly observed empirical fact. Your failure to recognise [sic]something that blatant is telling. KF" You need to go back and re-watch the video. Croft addresses this very issue and Meyer completely ignores his point but rather perseverates with his inapposite Rosetta Stone and Antarctica analogies. Lawrence Krauss also made this same point a few years back debating Meyer. Design attendant to human (and to a lesser extent other species) artifacts is "commonly" observed, and, in fact, we can observe the design process. However, as I discussed in my prior post, importing a supernatural or metaphysical unobservable, unmeasurable entity as the "designer" or cause of natural phenomena explains nothing. As one of my grad professors was fond of saying, there are no mysteries, simply uncontrolled variables. The notion of "God" (whatever that term means), as an independent variable "causing" natural phenomena, is, quite frankly, ridiculous and unhelpful--it has no explanatory power, it cannot be tested, it is not disprovable--it is a placeholder for folks who, like I said before, eschew the hard work of science in favor of useless (but perhaps psychologically comforting) explanations. As H.L. Menken once said, "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."chuckdarwin_{June 26, 2021
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Seversky, you are obviously throwing out everything inherently subjective, the entire creator category. This is unwise because, your emotions and personal character, you as being a decisionmaker, are also in that category. The creationist conceptual scheme: 1. Creator / chooses / spiritual / subjective / opinion 2. Creation / chosen / material / objective / factmohammadnursyamsu_{June 25, 2021
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BA77 everywhere. Brilliant!Truth Will Set You Free_{June 25, 2021
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Seversky, you, i.e. atheists, are the ones plugging naturalistic explanations into every gap that exists where no naturalistic explanation is even plausible. i.e. Origin of the Universe, Origin of Life, Origin of consciousness. etc.. etc.. The hypocrisy of your 'gap' accusation is literally dripping off every word you write. For instance, you claim that the 'huge amount of information' in genomes came from a purely naturalistic origin. Yet no one knows of any naturalistic processes ever creating any non-trivial amounts of information. Much less creating 'huge amounts' of information. Only intelligence has ever been shown to be capable of generating 'huge amounts' of information. Yet you plugged some unknown naturalistic explanation into the 'gap' anyway. And insinuated that the matter is settled. You also claim that invoking God as an explanation for, say, the origin of the universe closes off any further naturalistic alternative. That simply is not true. As Stephen Meyer outlined in his new book, Atheists have postulated all sorts of naturalistic scenarios to try to account for the origin of the universe. And all the naturalistic alternatives postulated thus far have failed to measure up to God as the best explanation among all the competing naturalistic scenarios. IMHO, the competition is not even close. But hey, don't take my word for it. Get you nose out of Richard Dawkins' atheistic books for a minute or two, and read Meyer's new book, and see for yourself, instead of just taking atheistic potshots from the nosebleed section.bornagain77_{June 25, 2021
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Bornagain77/20
Seversky restating Nietzsche’s premise as if it were true does not make it true.
No, it doesn't. But watching Christians plug their God into every gap in our scientific knowledge, does.
We have NEVER seen natural processes create any non-trivial functional information. EVER!
Wrong! There are huge amounts of functional information in the genomes of all living creatures and they have a naturalistic origin as far as we know. If you want to offer design as an alternative you need to explain why it takes so much more information to design an onion than a human being.
When you refuse to accept that known fact about the cause and effect structure of the world, and claim that some unknown natural process must have created the functional information we see in life, you are in fact flipping the entire ‘God of the Gaps’ argument on its head and turning it into a ‘naturalism of the gaps’ argument for atheism
Your God of the gaps argument closes off any possible alternatives. Naturalism is open to any natural alternatives, even your God if He can be shown to exist as part of the natural order. But we know that's unacceptable to Christians. Their God has to be top dog - or god.Seversky_{June 25, 2021
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Meyers contrasts the God hypothesis, with Dawkins hypothesis of blind, pitiless, indifference at the bottom of the universe. Obviously both are matters of opinion, not matters of fact.mohammadnursyamsu_{June 25, 2021
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CD, design is a commonly observed empirical fact. Your failure to recognise something that blatant is telling. KFkairosfocus_{June 25, 2021
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There is a world of difference between increments of functional information and blocks of COMPLEX, specifically functional information and organisation to effect and integrate major body plan features. Especially as the need for well fitted integration of many parts all at once requires that the configuration space is one of islands of function. Separated by wide seas of non function. This insight of design theory is too often sidestepped as though it were not there but any engineer or software designer will tell you of the functional integration challenge. KFkairosfocus_{June 25, 2021
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Lol again the argument of atheists is a combination of split hairs and the statement “because I don’t believe in your god, your god doesn’t exist like all myths” This statement is both hollow opinionated and meant to insult the people they are addressing which does absolutely nothing to justify the non-existence of God or prove it It’s the same crap to try to put believers on the defensive, and it trash I mean just reading the comments of our token atheists and laughing at how their arguments against god are guilty of the same criticisms they levy against Meyers It’s almost tiresome, they can’t disprove God and they can’t prove there is no god no differently than we can guarantee there is a god to them And Sandy is right God has an infinite number of ways to create any number of universe in any which way God wants to create them. he can fart them out of his hand or he can make them like our own, it doesn’t matter, Because there’s literally no limit to how God can create whatever God wants to create and WHY. For god doesn’t need a reason and certainly not the failed logic of limited, ignorant human atheist that says things aren’t designed because they know better, but turn around and say we don’t know enough about life to design it When people make statements like that I give them the bird and I walk awayAaronS1978_{June 25, 2021
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Actually, there are suggested natural processes that can produce “new functional information” in the genome. And, even if there weren’t, we still do not know nearly enough about natural processes to be able to rule them all out.
:)) Even if will be found that there are processes that build information how would that rule out God? I guess atheists think God is not capable to create processes that build info but randomness and blindness somehow can. I feel sorry for atheists.Sandy_{June 24, 2021
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Seversky restating Nietzsche’s premise as if it were true does not make it true. As Meyer explained, we are not arguing from ignorance but from what we know about the cause and effect structure of the world. WE KNOW for a fact that intelligence can create functional information. You yourself, via your own mind, just created more information than anyone has EVER seen unguided material processes create. We have NEVER seen natural processes create any non-trivial functional information. EVER! When you refuse to accept that known fact about the cause and effect structure of the world, and claim that some unknown natural process must have created the functional information we see in life, you are in fact flipping the entire 'God of the Gaps' argument on its head and turning it into a 'naturalism of the gaps' argument for atheism To paraphrase Nietzsche, “into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called naturalism”,bornagain77_{June 24, 2021
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Bornagain77/16
The ‘God of the gaps’ argument from Atheists and Theistic Evolutionists fails on so many levels that it is hard to know where to begin.
As you well know, the criticism of the "god of the gaps" argument is levelled justifiably at ID/creationists who fill any gap in our knowledge with "goddidit"
The reason why it is very interesting is that if God is not real, but is merely a delusion as atheists hold, then everything else becomes a delusion and/or illusion for the atheist.
You need to brush upon your reasoning. The non-existence of your God or any other mythical beings does not alter the reality of the world in which we find ourselves. Our view of the physical nature of a stone may have been changed radically by the advent of quantum theory but it still hurts if you kick one. And we have way more evidence for quantum theory than we do for your God. As for Meyer's arguments:
Because, just because cause A is not sufficient to produce effect X doesn’t mean that some other cause did it. You have to have independent evidence that that other cause is capable of doing it (i.e. producing the effect in question). That then becomes a God of the gaps argument when you say various natural processes are not sufficient to produce, say, the origin of the first life or the origin of the first animals in the history of life. If I were then to say, “Therefore God did it”, that would be a God of the gaps argument. It would be an argument from ignorance.
Except that is exactly what he is doing.
But that is not how we are arguing when we make the case for Intelligent Design because we are adding an additional premise. We are saying that.,,, 1. Various natural processes are not sufficient to produce new functional information, (specifically the digital code that is stored in the DNA molecule).
Actually, there are suggested natural processes that can produce "new functional information" in the genome. And, even if there weren't, we still do not know nearly enough about natural processes to be able to rule them all out. So Meyer's additional premise is an unsupported claim.
2. We do know of a cause that does produce (functional digital) information. (We have independent evidence that intelligent agency, that mind,,, can create (functional digital) information.),,,
Yes, we can design things and produce functional digital information. But we cannot design and build living creatures - not yet at least - and I think it's fair to say we are still some ways off being able to design and build a universe.
,,, so we are not arguing from our ignorance. We are arguing from our knowledge of cause and effect in the world. (Specifically we are arguing from what we know minds can do, i.e. produce information.)
Again, that is exactly what he is doing. He doesn't know natural processes can't give rise to "new functional information" any more than he knows there are aliens out there who can design living things and universes, something way beyond the powers of the designers we do know about.Seversky_{June 24, 2021
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EDTA/4
Yeah, I hope humanist philosophers are daily taking a cold, hard look at humanity’s reality.
I would hope so too. Much as I love Star Trek I don't foresee Utopian societies emerging for the foreseeable future, not while human beings are as they are. I suspect we'll continue to do as we have before, staggering along from crisis to crisis, some of them created out of our own stupidity, some not. Hopefully, there'll be some measure of overall progress but I wouldn't bank on it. And one good asteroid coming out of our blind spot would render the whole question moot anyway. Verse "It's being so cheerful that keeps me going" -- Mona Lott, ITMASeversky_{June 24, 2021
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@ ChuckyD No matter how much you deny it evolution is your god of gaps it literally does the same exact thing normal god of gaps does Or do you need the long laundry list of vestal organs deemed unimportant as evolutionarily Sprandel due to evolutionary got gaps and then were later found to have important and Necessary function in the body We can start the appendix Honestly are usually just nothing but a troll you have nothing important to say but most of the time you’re just a one-liner and you leave So I’m actually kind of shocked that you engaged a little bit more than I usually doAaronS1978_{June 24, 2021
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04
33
PM
PDT}

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