Marvin Olasky on theistic atheism – oops, I meant theistic evolution

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 19, 2010

theistic evolution}

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Today’s three great cultural flashpoints are abortion, same-sex marriage, and evolution. We can hedge on them and justify our hedging: Playing it cool here will help me gain for Christ people who would otherwise walk away.

I’m not knocking such considerations. Nor am I assuming that anyone who tries to meld eternal truth and contemporary trends lacks courage: Some do so on evangelistic principle, others because they believe what they’re saying is true. But attempts to unify antitheses generally defy logic.

Over the past 15 years I’ve tried to explain some of the problems of Darwinism. Last year I raised questions about the “theistic evolution” that Francis Collins espouses, but didn’t offer answers—and several WORLD readers have pressed me for more (see “Theistic evolutionist,” July 10, 2009).

Darn. He’s on to the story of the century, and I thought I had it all to myself. He continues,

To put it in terms of an equation, when atheists assure us that matter + evolution + 0 = all living things, and then theistic evolutionists answer, no, that matter + evolution + God = all living things, it will not take long for unbelievers to conclude that, therefore, God = 0.”

Right, exactly, that is the project of “theistic” evolution, so far as I can see. Helping theists get used to a world run by atheists and their values, while still hollering fer Jesus irrelevantly somewhere.

Comments

@Phaedros (#353)
Sorry veils that analogy doesn’t say it was uncaused it says it was a different type of cause.
It wasn't designed to. Instead it was designed to show why somethings cannot be predicted and how uncaused things can still be said to obey the laws of physics.veilsofmaya_{June 30, 2010
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bornagain77 (349), But you HAVEN'T shown the unreasonableness of it - that's the point. All I have been doing is pointingh out what we see at the qunatum level. Certain phenomena appear uncaused. Some of you claim that there is no such thing as an effect without a cause, yet no cause appears and - despite repeated requests - no-one, including you, has come up with any plausible, testable mechanism. For those who object to me mentioning references to "God did it", I suggest you look at bornagain's posts.Gaz_{June 30, 2010
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@Clive Hayden, (#341)
Solipsism would never posit a designer because it would never posit anything outside of itself, and if it designed itself, it would never need to posit design.
He doesn't claim to exist? In other words, isn't the Solipsist essentially using the claim that nothing exists outside of himself as a means to detect design? After all, if there is an external realty, there is the possibility that these external things are undesigned. Furthermore, many of these things appear to follow objective physical laws. But according to the solipsist, we cannot know this. Therefore, they do not exists outside himself. Where else did this complex phenomena that merely appears to be real come from? The solipsist is essentially calming to have designed the entirety of what we accept as external reality, including all biological lifeforms, the entire cosmos, all existing technology, every field of medicine, etc. So, it would appear that the solipsist's claim that nothing exists outside of himself is a filter for detecting design - in the case of the solipsist, he just happens to be the designer.veilsofmaya_{June 30, 2010
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"Please be specific when you claim “invoking God” stops science" If Gaz wants to worry about science stoppers perhaps he or she should be looking much closer to home. The real science stoppers is the nonsense Gaz has been putting forth such as something can come from nothing and effects dont have causes. God as a science stopper is the least of our problems with this stype of thinking. As Clive has stated and Gaz is in agreement this type of thinking is nothing more than poofery. One could say it is tantamount to magic but that would be giving magic a bad name. As William Lane Craig points out at least when the magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat THERE IS A HAT!! Vividvividbleau_{June 30, 2010
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Sorry veils that analogy doesn't say it was uncaused it says it was a different type of cause.Phaedros_{June 30, 2010
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Is Gaz a quantum physicist? I doubt it.Phaedros_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz,@344 Come on! You look like a reasonable man. Newton invoked (came to) God and it did not stop any of his brilliance. The rest of the examples that contradict your position are there to see. Are you implying a scientist looking at a phenomenon and saying, "How wonderful now I know that God made this...", he automatically stop his investigation and does nothing further. Please be specific when you claim "invoking God" stops science. Give some examples or make a logical argument. Claims does not cut it.mullerpr_{June 30, 2010
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@Phaedros(#335) Here's an analogy that I found quite useful. It's from Chapter 11 of The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch.
If we observe where one piece of a fully assembled jigsaw puzzle is, and we know the shapes of all the pieces, and that they are interlocked in the proper way, we can predict where all the other pieces are. But that does not mean that the other pieces were caused to be where they are by the piece we observed being where it is. Whether such causation is involved depends on how the jigsaw puzzle as a whole got there. If the piece we observed was laid down first, then it was indeed among the causes of the other pieces being where they are. If any other piece was laid down first, then the position of the piece we observed was an effect of that, not a cause. But if the puzzle was created by a single stroke of a jigsaw-puzzle-shaped cutter, and has never been disassembled, then none of the positions of the pieces are causes or effects of each other. They were not assembled in any order, but were created simultaneously, in positions such that the rules of the puzzle were already obeyed, which made those positions mutually predictable. Nevertheless, none of them caused the others.
It wasn't until I read this that I could remotely comprehend how something could be uncaused or what that might even mean. As I understand it, physical laws make determinations about events in spacetime just as the shapes of individual interlocking pieces predict their correct location in a puzzle. As such, there are specific aspects of an event we can predict regardless they occurred all at once as part of a group (no cause) or due to some previous cause. However, to return to the analogy, we cannot determine *when* the puzzle was completed, we can only determine that it *is* completed. This limits our ability to make predictions. It also allows things to appear to be uncaused, yet still adhere to the laws of physics. Of course, I'm a software engineer, not a quantum physicist, so hopefully Gaz will fill in any gaps or make any necessary corrections.veilsofmaya_{June 30, 2010
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Well Gaz I am sorry if you are truly being sincere in you argumentation, but it is very, very, hard for me to see how you can maintain your position after being shown so clearly, by so many, the unreasonableness of it.bornagain77_{June 30, 2010
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bornagain77,
Clive I hope you don’t mind but Gaz you stated to Clive: Once you get to God you’re at the end, as far as you can go. No Gaz, God is infinite in wisdom and knowledge, thus once you “get to God” you are then at the beginning of true learning that will be a journey of learning that last for eternity:
I don't mind at all, because that is an actual argument and not a calling into question anyone's sincerity. I agree with you in this comment, by the way.Clive Hayden_{June 30, 2010
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Clive I hope you don't mind but Gaz you stated to Clive: Once you get to God you’re at the end, as far as you can go. No Gaz, God is infinite in wisdom and knowledge, thus once you "get to God" you are then at the beginning of true learning that will be a journey of learning that last for eternity: 1 Corinthians 2:9 However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" and Psalms 111:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.bornagain77_{June 30, 2010
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bornagain77,
Gaz, and exactly how am I to know that you are not being insincere about your sincerity? Couldn’t your sincerity have just pop into existence completely uncaused after the sheer insincerity of your reasoning throughout this thread?
I think he's being sincere, no need to call his sincerity into question. It's a red herring.Clive Hayden_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz,
I certainly wouldn’t invoke God because it stops any further analysis. Once you get to God you’re at the end, as far as you can go. And most of the time we simply don’t need to, there’s more science to be done.
We can certainly talk about the merits or lack of merits of your philosophy, but make no mistake, it is only a philosophy. It might be right, it might be wrong, but what it isn't, is scientific.Clive Hayden_{June 30, 2010
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Clive Hayden (336), I certainly wouldn't invoke God because it stops any further analysis. Once you get to God you're at the end, as far as you can go. And most of the time we simply don't need to, there's more science to be done.Gaz_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz, and exactly how am I to know that you are not being insincere about your sincerity? Couldn't your sincerity have just pop into existence completely uncaused after the sheer insincerity of your reasoning throughout this thread?bornagain77_{June 30, 2010
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Clive Hayden (338), OK, if you want to call the QM version "poof" then I'm content to agree with you. I hope you'll excuse me if I don't use it myself because of the wider connotations.Gaz_{June 30, 2010
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veilsofmaya,
Given your wide definition of ID, wouldn’t Solipsism be considered ID since everything that exists would have been “designed” by a single intelligent agent?
Solipsism would never posit a designer because it would never posit anything outside of itself, and if it designed itself, it would never need to posit design.Clive Hayden_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz, to remove any doubt to your claim that godoid (false idol) is a "simpler" explanation, Dr. Craig, in response to Dawkins, goes over that very topic in the video I listed: Cosmological Argument – The Uncaused Cause Is A Personal Conscious Being – William Lane Craig – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4813914bornagain77_{June 30, 2010
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bornagain (337), I'll thank you not to accuse me of lying as I've been quite sincere throughout this exchange.Gaz_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz,
I suppose it’s a question of definitions, really. I hesitate to call, for instance, virtual particles popping in and out of existence as “poof” because “poof” tends to imply that anything can happen.
I see, I had no idea that "poof" in your mind meant that anything can happen. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on that, I never intended it to mean that anything can happen. I meant it, and still mean it, in this particular situation and circumstances of QM.Clive Hayden_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz believe whatever lie you want, it is obvious you will go to extraordinary length to do so anyway. as for myself I will follow the evidence and reason, as best as I can, to the truth. As I asked another unreasonable atheist though, Do you think you will be able to hide in your lies when you die and are brought before your Creator?bornagain77_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz,
Hmm, God invoked again, so the science is over. Time to end this (again).
The above statement is called a philosophy that you hold to Gaz, one saturated with assumptions and presuppositions about science and God. You may as well say that Philosophy was invoked again, so the science is over, unless you can show me scientifically, not philosophically, why invoking God stops science, and by science, I mean things like the temperature in a beaker, the speed of light, you know, natural movements....unless you can do this, your philosophy is self-referentially damaging to your own philosophy about what stops science, because your philosophy is not scientific. No philosophies are. They are what we bring to science, not what movements of matter "ought" to be. The old is/ought fallacy. From natural movements, no philosophy will be given, only things like weight, speed, distance, velocity, angle, position, etc. So it is your philosophy that ends the discussion, not God and science.Clive Hayden_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz- Why cant I predict what will happen in one week or how a butterfly's wings flapping in Australia will affect the weather in Brazil or the actions and motivations of others all of the time? It seems to me the simplest explanation fo these events is the fluctuation of energy levels and entropy. It would be hard to predict these things because they are essentially random an we dont have the tools to detect it. I mean look I think you're still confusing the breakdown of classical mechanics with you're desire to make this assertion about the breakdown of cause and effect. Basically, without cause and effect there is no sequence of events through time and no reality. There can be many ways that particular effects are caused by preceding effects an so on back to the uncaused cause.Phaedros_{June 30, 2010
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Phaedros (332), OK - then why can't we predict when an individual nuclei will decay or a sponatneous electronic transition will occur?Gaz_{June 30, 2010
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Phaedros (330), Of course I accept causality at the classical level, it's what I use to live my life. I'm just trying to say - for the umpteenth time - that there appear to be quantum situations where it doesn't apply and hence it cannot be considered a "law" in the general sense - which is what I feel some of the other corresponders here think when they claim that these uncaused quantum events must really have a cause because of the law of causality! I'm certainly not trolling. Help me out here - do you consider that there is a universal law of causality, that applies even in the quantum realm? Because if you do then we have a genuine disagreement. If you don't think that and consider that causality applies generally in the classical realm but may not in other circumstances, then we have an agreement. Which is it?Gaz_{June 30, 2010
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Gaz, We have now circled back to the top. Random decay events and spontaneous transitions demonstrate a lack of predictability by human observation, they do not demonstrate that they occur without cause or reason. And as before, it is for you to either support that claim or modify it reflect the facts which (by your own words) are not even in dispute.Upright BiPed_{June 30, 2010
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bornagain77 (327), the godoid can hardly be the antithesis of parsimony - it's a lot simpler than God, and a lot simpler than "information" that makes a "decision" - does that imply "conscious information"?Gaz_{June 30, 2010
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This is getting beyond the point of absurdity. I think all that Gaz has succeeded in doing is steering this forum off-topic for at least a week. The silly thing was that he accepted causality at one point, but then went on to claim that StephenB was wrong for "making causality a law". Gaz i simply looking to troll this entire forum I think.Phaedros_{June 30, 2010
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@nullasalus (#295) You wrote:
Wow, what a completely dishonest, avoidance-based rewording of what I said.
I assumed what you wrote was actually an answer to the question of why the MWI is supernatural. Furthermore, I had already asked if making the same prediction as other claims deemed "supernatural" qualified, which you seemed to deny. So, If what you said was not an answer, then please provide one.
You know, strawmen like this don’t work when anyone can just scroll back and read my comments.
Lets take a look, shall we? I wrote: So, you’re not implying they are both “supernatural” because they make similar predictions? If not then please elaborate on why the MWI is “supernatural.” You replied;
Because MWI interprets quantum physics as saying that undetectable, unreachable beings from universes distinct from ours are popping into existence and/or interact with our world and experiments? Because Deutsch’s entire explanation of ‘quantum computation’ explicitly relies on these beings working in parallel with “us”? Suggest the existence of other worlds and agents within them that cannot be directly detected empirically and you’re making supernatural claims. Unless you’re wearing a lab coat at the time. Then it’s physical. I’m calling that out as nonsense.
Again, if the MWI isn't supernatural because it makes similar predictions to other "supernatural" claims, such as "existence of other worlds and agents within them that cannot be directly detected empirically", then what's left? Otherwise, you seem to be merely asserting the MWI is "supernatural", which is what why I asked the question in the first place. Given that other supernatural claims "cannot be directly detected empirically" either, it's unclear why you wouldn't conceder them nonsense as well. Please see my previous comment. Clearly, there is clearly some reason why we do not accept the claim we live in a simulation because the sky is blue, etc., despite the fact that the predictions match empirical observations. Right? What is that reason? This is the question I'm asking.veilsofmaya_{June 30, 2010
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@nullasalus (#295) You wrote:
Simulating *this* reality is entirely within the realm of possibility for the Omega Point,
Here's the crux of the problem: ID claims there is a scientific method we can us to *detect* design. However, in making this objection your appealing to the mere possibility that we might be in some kind of simulation. If Tipler's Omega Point theory really is an intelligent design theory, as you claim, then it includes a means to detect it. For example, if you understand Tipler's theory you know he explains how the omega point actually comes about - an infinite amount of energy being released, should our universe end in a particular way, to drive power the simulation. The OP is not necessary in the way you are describing it as it depends on this actually occurring. This is a possibility. Tipler also says we could "detect" we were resurrected simulations via the OP because he makes specific predictions about the environment we would find ourselves in. Specifically, that it is similar to ours, but lacks sickness, suffering, death, etc. Ignoring these key aspects of the theory would seem to exclude it as ID as it becomes merely a possibility. You might object and say that we cannot know this is what they will NOT do, but this is also one of Deutsch's key objections, which I've mentioned earlier. Tipler's detection method almost entirely depends on predicting what vastly intelligent, computational based, collective super agent will do in the future. I.E. they will act like one of our current conceptions of God. As you've continually noted, based on the wide definition of God, the supernatural, etc. - historically and even today - this is wildly speculative. As such, posing a theory that predicts, should we exist in a virtual reality simulation, it would appear just like our reality, but does so using the assumption above is a bad explanation. That is, it is a convoluted elaboration of reality based on high speculation, which we can discard. Note that one could claim we can detect that we live in a simulation if the sun rises tomorrow or if the sky is blue or if we act just like we have acted in the past and act as we do today. Empirical observations fit all of those predictions. Welcome to the problem of induction and the incompleteness of empiricism.
..[ID]absolutely swallows up MWI
for reasons you have still yet to elaborate on. Given this claim, does ID swallow up Soliphism as well? As for the rest of your comment, please see above. ID theories not only make claims about what is designed but how it can be detected. You're mixing and matching the designer and the means to detect him. this is why I provided the example… if the resurrected Jesus is a simulation, it’s unclear how believing this is true ensures an omnipotent entity at the omega point will resurrect me at all – let alone that it will put me in a pleasant simulation rather than one that is extremely unpleasant. If anything is non-sensical, this would be it. If Dembski really does believe Jesus was resurrected, it's highly likely he would not think this represented detection of design via the OP. I asked… Again, I’d ask anyone here to answer the questions I posed based on what they actually believe to be true. Why do you not believe in the Omega Point? If I were to guess, you'd also not believe the claim that we can detect we live in a simulation because the sky is blue, etc., And that you'd not believe for essentially the same reason. Neither provide a hard to vary expiration of how their detection criterial indicates we live in a simulation. Again, why is Tipler's explanation easy to vary? Tipler's detection method almost entirely depends on predicting what vastly intelligent, computational based, collective super agent will do in the future. I.E. they will act like one of our current conceptions of God. As you've continually noted, based on the wide definition of God, the supernatural, etc. - historically and even today - this is highly speculative. Why is explanation that they sky is blue easy to vary?It's merely a prediction that matches what we empirical observe. I've provided no explanation.veilsofmaya_{June 30, 2010
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