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Wads42
Guest
Wads; O yes I can. Hawking specifically states that a God was not necessary to “light the blue touchpaper”, or to start the Universe. That makes him sound like an atheist to me. If there is no God you cannot have Intelligent Design or deliberate intelligent Fine-Tuning. Maybe there are some other kind of gods?–I cannot spend my life trying to prove that do not all exist; but if they do not do creation, as wll as all the other things the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic God is supposed to do,–then why are they for?
Maybe Amon-Ra did it.
As for debunking Stenger,-does your man have counter-evidence that altering the fine-constants does NOT allow stars to live long enough to have planets that might support Life?–eg around a billion years or so? This planet has only had complex life for half a billion years; before that there were only bacteria.
Anyway I will do you the courtesy of reading your link; but if he starts going on about Jesus, then I’m off.
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Wads42
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Wads: Certainly I can agree that everything has an underlying mathematical structure, because of still deeper underlying Logical Necessity. But that does not produce strict determinism. Don’t tell me you are a determinist surely?-that’s not allowed in Christian apologetics; you are supposed to believe in the gift of freewill. Different thermodynamic systems all have a logcal/mathematical underpinning, but there are still multiple causes and multiple effects. What looks like freewill is just a big pile of causal events, governed by the same mathematics, but not part of the same sum,and is therefore illusory.You bet.
Welcome to CAF, BMullins.
God bless,
jd
So if there is no universal Freewill and no strict Determinism, then the answer must be Compatibilsm.
You must have notuced that the proliferation of causes and effects over time is in fact Evolution?
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In_Spiration
Guest
We do know as a consequence of our assumed, Anselmian God-concept, though, that the proposition at issue must be non-contingent, that it’s definitely either necessary or impossible, and not anywhere between those two extremes. You agree to that much, correct? Once that’s granted, however, we arguably run into trouble upon the slightest attempt to calculate probability-confidence and/or weigh the evidence surrounding even our very determination of just whether we’re engaging in conception or merely imagination.
Since they put it in clearer words, from here I’m simply going to copy and paste a few substantial portions of the following combox discussion, which ensued under that blog post to which I linked before. Peter Lupu of Arizona State criticized:
"*Subjective or Bayesian probability can only say something about the degree of belief regarding the truth of a proposition, given evidence. However, I fail to see how such a notion of probability can apply to the truth, per se, of necessarily true or necessarily false propositions.
Consider a simple example. The proposition ‘P & ~P’ is necessarily false. Does it makes sense to say that the falsity of this proposition has a high probability based upon evidence consisting of a large number of instances of the same form all of which were found to be false?
I don’t think it makes sense to say that.*"
Further along those lines, Bill, the host, added:
“‘There are evils that are not explainable by free human agency’ is an empirical, contingent proposition. ‘There is no God’ is a necessary proposition if true. What inference principles could license the move from the first to the second?”
. . ."*Suppose God exists. Then he nec. exists. It follows that any evil there is just has to be logically consistent with the existence of God.
Now turn it around the other way. Here is some evil that cannot be laid at the doorstep of a free agent, e.g. Bambi being burned alive in a forest fire. Assume that this is indeed an evil, and assume that God is noncontingent. How can this natural evil provide any evidence for the nonexistence of God? If God exists, then the counterevidence is merely apparent. If God does not exist, then he is impossible. But how can I infer the impossibility of God from a mere contingent fact, namely, that there is natural evil?*"
. . .“One question is how the Bambi example provides any evidence of GRATUITOUS evil. Let’s agree that the suffering of the fawn is evil (not exactly obvious, but close enough) and let’s agree that the suffering – the felt suffering, not mere behavior – is empirically detectable. It seems to me that the GRATUITOUSNESS of the suffering is not empirically detectable. After all, if God exists then there cannot be any gratuitous evils. What is empirically detectable is the same whether or not the sufering is gratuitous. To say of some suffering that it is gratuitous is equivalent to saying that the universe is godless.”
. . ."*I agree that just one case of gratuitous evil refutes the proposition that God exists. But how do you know that a given case of evil is a case of GRATUITOUS evil? Is gratuitousness an empirically detectable feature?
To avoid begging the question you need an independent way of establishing that your favorite example of evil is gratuitous, a way independent of just assuming that there is no God.
If God exists, then there are no gratuitous evils. Contrapositively, if there are some gratuitous evils, then God does not exist. Now how will you establish that there are some gratuitous evils?
If x is apparently F it doesn’t follow that x is F. So you can’t appeal to the appearance of gratuitousness.*"
Of course, on the other hand, supposing we actually considered all the various implications, it seems that this tactic might very well end up proving way too much. For both of us. (Thus, perhaps every one of us just possesses an innate knowledge of the answer. Except, to our frustration, it dwells deep in darkness, beyond our current epistemic reach, underneath layer upon subconscious layer of muddled mental infrastructure – a profundity entangled somewhere between our preferences for surprisingly-dense distraction and disturbingly-adaptive self-deception.)
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Al_Moritz
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Oh really? I have given you a link to my own article where I extensively discuss Stenger, and I have given you a link to an article by a cosmologist who in detail debunks Stenger’s calculations. Perhaps you should first read the sources that I give you before you make any blanket accusations.
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Wads42
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Wads: I have had a quick look at Luke Barnes; obviously it needs more than a quick look, and I shall go back to it. He posts a debunk-ation, yes, and no doubt to the non-Physicist it looks devastating; how could they tell otherwise? Though I suppose that if a Christian apologist says it is “devastating” then it must be so.
If you look at all the comments, both in response to Luke Barnes link, and in this onehttp://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=8109 also,
including a reponse from Victor Stenger,-you will see that Barnes certainly does not have it all his own way.
I suggest that we all reserve judgement on this one, instead of posting hysterical triumphalism. The maths and physics is beyond me; let’s leave it to the experts.
Besides, if that is Luke Barnes photo in his link, then he could be 17; and you know how useless the conclusions of a 17-year old callow youth are, don’t you?
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Al_Moritz
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Answer:
Dude, you are really hard of understanding! Of course Hawking is an atheist. But as I have said repeatedly, and as you should know if you actually had studied the issues, the apparent fine-tuning of the laws of nature is not (let me spell it out for you: NOT) a religious argument. It is affirmed by all leading cosmologists who are studying the issue, e.g. Hawking, Rees, Weinberg, Suesskind, Davies, Smolin (Stenger is not a leading cosmologist; his fame is based on his atheism, not his scientific research). The ‘way out’ for most of these cosmologists is the multiverse (and I said above in the post you responded to that this is the case for Hawking), and not divine design.
So no, you can’t have it both ways, it’s either Hawking or Stenger.
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Al_Moritz
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He is not 17, he is a grown-up scientist. If the math and physics are so beyond you that you cannot even follow his argument in rough outlines, then you have no business having an opinion on these issues at all.
Well, doesn’t seem that way after all.
Thank you for just confirming what I said all along, that your de-conversion at age 17 was totally without merit !!! Just keep digging your hole deeper and deeper. It’s really outrageous fun to watch. But honestly, I’d rather see that you seriously study the issues associated with your worldview. At age 71 it may not be too late for you to reconsider, before you meet your Maker whom you so ferociously, and obviously without sufficient reason, deny.
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Al_Moritz
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Or rather, you should accept the judgment of the most acknowledged scientific experts on the issue, that of the leading cosmologists (see above), including Smolin whom you cite on cosmological natural selection and your beloved Hawking, that the apparent-fine-tuning is absolutely real and to be taken seriously. Just as you reasonably accept the judgment of the scientific experts on the evolution issue, which is that evolution is a fact, and its explanation of mechanism a good and sound theory.
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Wads42
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I have been re-checking the astronomer whom you cite,- Luke Barnes, and his article “debunking” Stenger appears to have been posted in “Nature” in April 2010.
As Victor Stenger himself says in one of the comment sections, his book “The Fallacy of Fine-tuning” was set to come out the following year. Checking my own copy which I purchased about 2 months ago, I see it was indeed published in May 2011.
Perhaps Barnes critique was a bit premature and is now out-dated?
However,even if Stenger was to be debunked generally, it would only be on scientific/mathematical grounds, and a replacement naturalistic model would have to be found. It would certainly not make a default argument for Intelligent Design by the Christian God. To propose that scenario would be to commit yet another fallacy: “The Argument from Ignorance”.
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Wads42
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I have had quite a bit of experience on forums like this one, and it is always the same. When you find that atheists are not the push-over you anticipated, you get cross and start up the Ad Hominems and general abuse. I always try to give reasoned evedential comments; sorry if it is more than you can stomach.You coulda fooled me!
What’s tough is to know that we’ve been dealing with these same naked assertions, on this forum and elsewhere, for years. So, you’re not the first to come along and act like an adult know-it-all. Come back 17 years from now and tell us what you think. . . .
In the mean time, do you know what “naked assertion” means? You can probably look it up as I’m sure you have your high school Merriam-Webster somewhere in your room. While you’re at it, look up OED Shorter Edition, too. Like so many other things, I’m sure you’ve never heard of that. Also, look up Shakespeare; although you might have heard of him once or twice.
You have a predilection for throwing out a few facticals, that everyone knows of, then mixing them in with a few naked assertions, then trying to pass it all off as some award-winning Pièce de Résistance. You neither help yourself, nor any conversation with such tactics. (You must have been told that we’re a bunch of “push-overs,” since we must be hospitable.)
Also, your arguments are nothing more than argumentative. Many of us come here to learn, if possible, from what we hope are much smarter people than we. But, every so often we get a child who thinks he’s a man.
God bless,
jd
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Al_Moritz
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Wads’ answer to my charge that the hypothesis of Cosmological Natural Selection does not solve the design problem:
“Wads: Of course it does; in just the same way as Charles Darwin has solved the Design problem. Who now, except the seriously deluded, believes in “Paley’s Watch” any more?”
Reply:
So please, tell me, how do you counter my critique of the hypothesis?
“Wads: Of course it does; in just the same way as Charles Darwin has solved the Design problem. Who now, except the seriously deluded, believes in “Paley’s Watch” any more?”
Reply:
So please, tell me, how do you counter my critique of the hypothesis?
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Al_Moritz
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Haha! How about this argument of yours:
And that was not an Ad Hominem? You are funny.
I haven’t heard much of “reasoned evidential comments” from you lately.
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Wads42
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I repeat my answer to another post of your’s on this topic. I have read as much of Luke Barnes as I can in the time available since you mentioned him. You and he may have "debunked "Stenger to your own satisfaction, but that is not the end of it. Barnes article in “Nature,” in which he does this alleged debunking is dated April 2010. Stenger’s book of which I have my own copy, was published later, May 2011, So it looks as though poor Barnes will have to start all over again.
Anyway. I think this whole discussion is now deteriorating into Ad Hominems. I do not have time to to keep responding to the increasingly hostile responses to my criticisms of your assertions, and I have to help the wife get ready for Christmas. It is all a waste of time anyway. So I am leaving.
Farewell.
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In_Spiration
Guest
For good measure, figured I would toss in a li’l bit of the ol’ Summa Theologiae, as I noticed there was a growing dispute over the question of how/whether Man’s will is free. Now, you see, according to medieval scholars, the author of this was kind of a big deal; and rather smart, apparently. His name was Thomas Aquinas; he was a problem-solver. In other words, he solved problems. That is, ones like these. So, in essence, that’s just what it is he would do, basically. And indeed, I’m told, often quite well – unto solution. Consider (with the help of my emphases):
- “The will does not desire of necessity whatsoever it desires. In order to make this evident we must observe that as the intellect naturally and of necessity adheres to the first principles, so the will adheres to the last end . . .] Now there are some things intelligible which have not a necessary connection with the first principles; such as contingent propositions, the denial of which does not involve a denial of the first principles. And to such the intellect does not assent of necessity. But there are some propositions which have a necessary connection with the first principles: such as demonstrable conclusions, a denial of which involves a denial of the first principles. And to these the intellect assents of necessity, when once it is aware of the necessary connection of these conclusions with the principles; but it does not assent of necessity until through the demonstration it recognizes the necessity of such connection. It is the same with the will. For there are certain individual goods which have not a necessary connection with happiness, because without them a man can be happy: and to such the will does not adhere of necessity. But there are some things which have a necessary connection with happiness, by means of which things man adheres to God, in Whom alone true happiness consists. Nevertheless, until through the certitude of the Divine Vision the necessity of such connection be shown, the will does not adhere to God of necessity, nor to those things which are of God. But the will of the man who sees God in His essence of necessity adheres to God, just as now we desire of necessity to be happy. It is therefore clear that the will does not desire of necessity whatever it desires.”
- “[W]e must observe that some things act without judgment; as a stone moves downwards; and in like manner all things which lack knowledge. And some act from judgment, but not a free judgment; as brute animals. For the sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned, from a natural and not a free judgment, because it judges, not from reason, but from natural instinct. And the same thing is to be said of any judgment of brute animals. But man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will.”
- “The proper act of free-will is choice: for we say that we have a free-will because we can take one thing while refusing another; and this is to choose. Therefore we must consider the nature of free-will, by considering the nature of choice. Now two things concur in choice: one on the part of the cognitive power, the other on the part of the appetitive power. On the part of the cognitive power, counsel is required, by which we judge one thing to be preferred to another: and on the part of the appetitive power, it is required that the appetite should accept the judgment of counsel. Therefore Aristotle (Ethic. vi, 2) leaves it in doubt whether choice belongs principally to the appetitive or the cognitive power: since he says that choice is either “an appetitive intellect or an intellectual appetite.” But (Ethic. iii, 3) he inclines to its being an intellectual appetite when he describes choice as “a desire proceeding from counsel.” And the reason of this is because the proper object of choice is the means to the end: and this, as such, is in the nature of that good which is called useful: wherefore since good, as such, is the object of the appetite, it follows that choice is principally an act of the appetitive power. And thus free-will is an appetitive power.”
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Jaaanosik
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The question is if it’s the first issue/print. Sometimes it can be written sooner and a book can have the second, the third, … issue.
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Al_Moritz
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Hostile? If you can’t stand the heat of informed people systematically picking apart your arguments and statements one by one, that’s too bad. You probably had expected a bunch of naive, irrational, uninformed, science-illiterate, deluded and brain-washed individuals on this board, according to the stereotype promoted by Dawkins and his ilk. Well, it did not turn out that way.
I wish you All the Best and God’s grace for your journey of truth, which clearly should not be finished.
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Al_Moritz
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Well, I am not holding my breath that Stenger has added some breathtaking revolutionary new insights to his usual arguments that would prove the leading cosmologists wrong. In a similar vein, I wouldn’t hold my breath about a new book by Michael Behe either.
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tonyrey
Guest
?
- One assumption!
- Does everything have a cause?
- If so how do you know everything has a cause?
- I**f not **second assumption!
- Do you have teleological goals?.
- If so what physical causes do they have?
- If not how do they originate?
8.Assuming there is no teleology and lack of divine guidance is a colossal claim to make considering the immense number of teleological goals in the world.
The immense number of teleological goals in the world is abundant evidence - for those who are not deeply entrenched in physical causality .
An equally facile statement would be
“All you are doing is atheist apologetics”…
An equally facile statement would be
“(and to be so, you must have a source of infallible knowledge)” (I’m not Scottish!)
An equally facile statement would be
“then pray to yourself and tell us exactly how you obtain the power to make plans and purposes? By magical incantations?”
If you are a brute fact your opinion is certainly not of dubious value. It is utterly valueless!
An evasion of the truth - in which you don’t seem to be the slightest bit interested if it conflicts with your preconceived ideas…
Thank you for confirming that the brain is a marvel of design for which fortuitous combinations of molecules and random mutations are a hopelessly inadequate explanation.
As far as I’m aware there is no such thing as “causealogy”! You have overlooked the immense probability that the extreme complexity of the marvels of design in the universe are due to directed development rather than the aimless meanderings of irrational forces - from which your “rational” arguments are supposed to be derived!
We are back to blind forces steering the lump of tissue in your skull - which is propounding the hypothesis that your hypothesis is caused by blind forces steering the lump of tissue in your skull… A most fascinating phenomenon! There is certainly no homunculus nor a brain that is inexplicably capable of explaining itself. Perhaps you would let us have the secret of its ingenious mechanism…
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tonyrey
Guest
I do not have time to to keep responding to the increasingly hostile responses to my criticisms of your assertions, and I have to help the wife get ready for Christmas. It is all a waste of time anyway. So I am leaving.
Hostile! There are individuals who don’t like receiving a taste of their own medicine…
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