Existence and evidence

[Touchstone]

Never said it did. But since we know design exists, and we know design can explain our world, we have no need to start postulating other less justifiable entities to explain our world like “infinity and/or chaos that just happened to be formed the right way”.

But you’ve only got half of the equation, and the phenomena doesn’t entail the designer. Paley could justify the design of the watch found on the moor with the matching of the phenomena (machined metal, for example) with known agents capable of creating and implementing such designs – watchmakers. Even if he were to have found, say, a carburetor, something he wasn’t mehanically familiar with, just the fabrication evidences and materials would be sufficient to match it up as “something men might make”.

And the key there is something your explanation leaves out – the availability of the “designer” as a real and capable agent that gets matched with design. If we find a watch on the moor, it’s not even interesting in terms of its provenance. If we were to find that same watch buried deep in the rock from the Silurian, well, that would be a fantastic problem. Same watch, but a huge problem. Why? Because there’s no available designer for such a thing known or in evidence from the Silurian.

If you survey how design decisions are really arrived at – from archaeology to forensic medicine to SETI – you will see that the design inference is fundamentally balanced, and fundamentally at odds with the theistic leap; the presence and capabilities of the telic agents are matched up with the phenomena.

Never forced a thing - I’m saying what’s entirely possible with what we know about design, and certainly design in our world. As I said repeatedly, this doesn’t ‘prove’ anything. It just shows that theism/deism is intellectually the more satisfying option to go with as opposed to atheism when it comes to existence questions.

It’s not, because of the glaring, conspicuous absence of evidence for the designed as part of the balanced (name removed by moderator)uts for a design inference. Find a watch on the moor yesterday? No problem. Easy explanation. Find a watch buried in Silurian rock? Big problem – no matching available designer. Awed at the intricate “design” of the human eye? Big problem – no matching designer available for the reasonable inference. It’s completely lopsided, empirically.

But, you are correct – anything’s possible, and there’s no discounting the possibility of a designer.

You’re asking me if it could be, but I’m not denying that it couldn’t be. The world “could have” begun only five minutes ago. I’m saying which is the easier explanation to go with. “Sure, we know that design can be responsible for all we see, including subjective experience and nowadays even simulation evidence. And sure, we have no idea that chaos could be responsible for all we see, and we have no comparable evidence of it. But, I can imagine it all being undesigned!” Sure, you can imagine it. It’s just far less parsimonious.

lex parsimoniae -* entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem*

In English: do not mutiply entities beyond what’s necessary.

This is a classic case of parsimony working toward a materialist conclusion. Here you’ve ‘multiplied’ the entities with the Mother of All Entities

For the theist/deist, it’s enough to have a simulation and a designer with regards to the universe. There’s a reason I said theist/deist - because this thought experiment doesn’t bring us anywhere near where we need to be for doctrinal specifics. Maybe the mormons are right, and God has eternally pre-existed alongside matter. Maybe other christians are right, and God created the universe ex nihilo (even our own simulations can come close to such a description.) Maybe panentheist belief is right, and God is both the simulation and something else beyond it.

But again, the thought grounds the conversation right on theist/deist home territory. Atheists can argue, they can consider, they can discover. But the atheist is in an awkward situation.

As someone who was a Christian for 30+ and finally capitulated to the “awkwardness” of theism as a fundamental explanation on the way to “swimming the Tiber” and converting to Catholicism from Protestantism last summer, I’d say it’s the reverse. Atheism doesn’t multiply entities, and cleaves to explanatory economy.

What’s really at issue, I think, is a stong inclination towards anthropomorphism in these subjects. We are strongly disposed toward intentionality and telic explanations as humans; it’s an artifact of our history and path to the present. It colors our thinking, heavily if we are not on guard against it, when we move away from straightforward empirical analyses and toward a metaphysic. We “see design in all things” because we are fundamentally design-oriented beings. When you are a hammer, everything looks a nail… when you’re a designer,…

You said it was damn close to X-existence before - now you’re changing your mind on this. Yes, I said outright - we don’t have X-existence (or at least not a pure X-existence.) But sim-existence can be coded in such a way as to be utterly unlike P-existence. And our ‘constraints’ are hardly applicable to sim-existence. In there, there are no constraints. Aside from, perhaps, logical ones. No making a circle a triangle.

Even a circle can be a triangle in a sim – I develop software for a living, and have long experience in software simulations. If you chop the constraints down far enough, which is easy when you are creating a virtual system, you can even avoid unavoidable constraints we deal with in the real world like the Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction. Neither of those have to apply in your simulation, and it doesn’t have to cohere like the real world if you don’t want it to.

And as I said, even if I granted PRG was not perfectly X, it doesn’t matter. The fact remains that PRG may well BE X, or something effectively close to it.

It’s ‘undefined’. At best, your doing something like musing what ‘divide by zero’ is really like. It’s incoherent from the outset, such musings. You’re right that it could be anything, but it could also be nothing. That’s the sum of what me might extend from our context upward on the stack.

Always faith. Forever faith. That which can never be decisively proven, even if it’s true, requires faith.

As a former Christian, I recognize this as a favorite bit of equivocation – conflating “reasoned trust” with, “unsupportable belief”. I have faith that reality is real, because I must, if I want to live and function. I cannot deny the reality of reality, even if I try – I cannot read this sentence while keeping my hand directly over an open flame, such is my unshakeable (and even physiological) commitment to reality.

That does require faith, for sure. But it’s a wholly different kind of commitment by virtue of its necessity. Other kinds of faith are fundamentally different in that they don’t obtain of necessity.

No, the reality of the situation doesn’t even come into play here. It’s a question of where reason is most easily employed. Otherwise you’d be saying ‘The theist only has justification to believe in God if God exists.’ Nonsense.

That’s a good point!

Immaterial and timeless can matter, to the theist. But it doesn’t matter to the atheist if you end up with an actual God and an altered doctrine. You’re groundlessly asserting that PRG is not only akin to P, but that the programmer in PRG is limited by physical rules you can’t possibly know. PRG could be timeless. PRG could be eternal and FAPP immaterial. It also could not be, but again, it’s a question of justification of considering God in this context.

The object – my objection – here is not that PRG-existence can’t be “timeless” or “immaterial”. As above, if this is a “sim-world” we are communicating in presently (or think we are communicating in, sigh), the outer context is undefined, unconstrained. Or at least we can’t say it is not. We can’t say anything at all about it.

But the problem is the terms you use, themselves. “Timeless” and “immaterial” are just incoherent, conceptually, no more meaningful than wondering “what the number 5 weighs”. PRG-world is opaque, undefined – that’s a constraint we can deal with (if we are honest). What’s problematic is the overlay of incoherent terms – “immaterial” as “real”, which really is nothing more meaningful than “what the number 5 weighs” – “real” being a stolen concept imported from materialist ontology as a means of “reifying”[sic] the immaterial, in such a way as to create the illusion of substance[sic], or some property that distinguishes it from the simply imaginary or invented.

Besides - even the most orthodox Christian God has always been considered subject to some limitations - logical, or essential, etc. There are a variety of conceptions of God, three of which I already listed, more of which could be listed. The design argument just illustrates the justification theists/deists have to discuss possibilities with mind as fundamental. And the justification is better than the alternative.

It all collapses completely when the thinker is pressed for a match between the designed and the designer, to connect the Cause and the Effect. We have the phenomena in view, but no designer in view that can plausibly account for the phenomena.

-Touchstone

 

[Nullasalus]

And the key there is something your explanation leaves out – the availability of the “designer” as a real and capable agent that gets matched with design.

I said outright that even if the designer is real, you’re going to deal with a faith leap in order to arrive at the conclusion. What’s more, at least the idea of a designer works with something we directly know from experience - we do know that design itself exists. We do not know that a mindless agent is capable of such things; it’s a brute assumption. In fact, we can never be certain of a mindless agent doing much of anything, while at the same time we can never deny that design exists as an option.

Deism/theism is vastly more reasonable at that level.

If you survey how design decisions are really arrived at – from archaeology to forensic medicine to SETI – you will see that the design inference is fundamentally balanced, and fundamentally at odds with the theistic leap; the presence and capabilities of the telic agents are matched up with the phenomena.

There is a fundamental difference between any designer within a reality and the designer of the reality itself. I would not argue you need a comparable faith leap to determine a watch was designed, even in the absence of apparently ‘real’ agents (And SETI’s methods and concepts are themselves open to a whole lot of questioning - There agents are not ‘present’ there, their capabilities are assumed rather than known). But in the case of God-level design, faith is required.

It’s not, because of the glaring, conspicuous absence of evidence for the designed as part of the balanced (name removed by moderator)uts for a design inference. Find a watch on the moor yesterday? No problem. Easy explanation. Find a watch buried in Silurian rock? Big problem – no matching available designer. Awed at the intricate “design” of the human eye? Big problem – no matching designer available for the reasonable inference. It’s completely lopsided, empirically.

You’re trying to position “it just happened without design” as the null hypothesis - but that hypothesis is not only lacking evidence, but we have no unassumed experience of it. We do have impossible-to-ignore evidence of design.

This is a classic case of parsimony working toward a materialist conclusion. Here you’ve ‘multiplied’ the entities with the Mother of All Entities

A design hypothesis postulates a single entity - a Designer. But your response is an entity as well. The only difference is that yours lacks the one thing we’re aware of that is capable of organizing and creating. We have two entities as options - one of those entities is more justifiable. It is not yours.

As someone who was a Christian for 30+ and finally capitulated to the “awkwardness” of theism as a fundamental explanation on the way to “swimming the Tiber” and converting to Catholicism from Protestantism last summer, I’d say it’s the reverse. Atheism doesn’t multiply entities, and cleaves to explanatory economy.

You’ve been misinformed.

Even a circle can be a triangle in a sim – I develop software for a living, and have long experience in software simulations.

By all means, provide the simulation. I’d love to see you create a sim where a circle is truly a triangle, and not in some cop out way.

Provide me a simulation where 2 + 2 = 4 while you’re at it.

Neither of those have to apply in your simulation, and it doesn’t have to cohere like the real world if you don’t want it to.

I’ve asserted this much repeatedly.

It’s ‘undefined’. At best, your doing something like musing what ‘divide by zero’ is really like. It’s incoherent from the outset, such musings. You’re right that it could be anything, but it could also be nothing. That’s the sum of what me might extend from our context upward on the stack.

I said outright, it’s quite possible that there is no Designer, no God, etc. I repeated that this example does not prove anything beyond doubt. It simply establishes what’s the most reasonable inference based on available knowledge. You’re having trouble with the concept.

As a former Christian, I recognize this as a favorite bit of equivocation

You should carefully read what I’ve been writing here, because I’ve said that this example does nothing to prove Christianity itself - hence my repeated inclusion of deism. And between you and me, I have as much respect for the ‘I was a Christian for X years and then became an atheist!’ line as ‘I was an atheist for X years and then became a Christian!’ line. It’s an attempt to establish credentials that are questionable to say the least.

That does require faith, for sure. But it’s a wholly different kind of commitment by virtue of its necessity. Other kinds of faith are fundamentally different in that they don’t obtain of necessity.

You’re right - the faith an atheist requires in this situation is a more difficult commitment than the faith required by a theist/deist.

But the problem is the terms you use, themselves. “Timeless” and “immaterial” are just incoherent, conceptually, no more meaningful than wondering “what the number 5 weighs”. PRG-world is opaque, undefined – that’s a constraint we can deal with (if we are honest). What’s problematic is the overlay of incoherent terms – “immaterial” as “real”, which really is nothing more meaningful than “what the number 5 weighs” – “real” being a stolen concept imported from materialist ontology as a means of “reifying”[sic] the immaterial, in such a way as to create the illusion of substance[sic], or some property that distinguishes it from the simply imaginary or invented.

Timeless and immaterial are completely coherent from the perspective of P. PRG is outside of time. PRG is not made out of any of the ‘material’ we know, the only material we can know. As I’ve said, even if PRG has some kind of ‘material’ reality, it really doesn’t matter for the deist/theist. At that point the discussion has moved beyond the question of the designer’s existence to questions of the designer’s properties. The atheist has no place in that discussion.

It all collapses completely when the thinker is pressed for a match between the designed and the designer, to connect the Cause and the Effect. We have the phenomena in view, but no designer in view that can plausibly account for the phenomena.

Nor can we ever have a ‘match’, even if God does exist. Someone can always argue that a lesser, non-deity being - and one within our world, no less - is responsible for what we see. Did “I’m God, and I exist” get written on the moon in humongous letters? That’s no more proof of God than if I saw those words on an interstate billboard. It could have been some other intelligent entity, playing with us. Did we see a similar event which defies all known physical laws? Well, then clearly our knowledge of physical laws is merely incomplete. Or we’ve been tricked.

The problem you’re not recognizing is that, as an atheist, you’re relying on a designer as an explanation, just as I am. The difference is that your designer is mindless. Hence, “The Blind Watchmaker”. But the only evidence I certainly and undoubtedly have of creation and organization is that a mind is a fundamental requirement. ‘Mindless, fundamental design’ has no evidence - it’s a postulated philosophical, and frankly, theological construct.

 

[fhansen]

Believers assert a third kind of existence. It is not physical, but not merely conceptual either. Let’s call it X-existence (in math “x” usually denotes unknowns). This existence is supposed to be “active” in the sense that it can effect material existence, but it cannot be affected by material existence. Allegedly it has some other attributes, like being outside of space and time, etc.

We are not familiar with such kind of existence. Nowhere in the universe have we ever seen of found such existence. It can be posited as a hypothesis, however.

The question arises: what kind of evidence is there to support this hypothesis? What is there to substantiate that the concept of such existence is meaningful?

“Eternity” is a concept about a realty existing outside of our universe. It simply means that something has always existed. But if our universe always existed, we certainly don’t observe any such thing as timelessness within it. And if it didn’t always exist, then the universe must have come from something which always existed or else we’re faced with a situation less conceivable than eternity, that something came from nothing.

 

[Touchstone]

I said outright that even if the designer is real, you’re going to deal with a faith leap in order to arrive at the conclusion. What’s more, at least the idea of a designer works with something we directly know from experience - we do know that design itself exists. We do not know that a mindless agent is capable of such things; it’s a brute assumption. In fact, we can never be certain of a mindless agent doing much of anything, while at the same time we can never deny that design exists as an option.

Deism/theism is vastly more reasonable at that level.

We don’t know that a mindless agent is capable of such things, at least in the strong epistemic sense of ‘know’; we can certainly watch designs happen from impersonal forces as proximal causes – a teardrop is ‘designed’ by the air as it falls, a mountain is “designed” by the weather, erosion, and drainage, as it ages, and animals and other organisms are ‘designed’ by the interaction of genetics, epigenetics and the environment over time, all without (ostensibly) any proximal telic intervention.

But we don’t have to commit to knowing. We see that as a live option, and one that is increasingly fortified with each new piece of scientific theory that gets ratified by experience and testing. It’s in the phase space, and as such, is one that has a distinct parsimonious advantage – no supernatural deities need by multiplied into the explanation!

There is a fundamental difference between any designer within a reality and the designer of the reality itself. I would not argue you need a comparable faith leap to determine a watch was designed, even in the absence of apparently ‘real’ agents (And SETI’s methods and concepts are themselves open to a whole lot of questioning - There agents are not ‘present’ there, their capabilities are assumed rather than known). But in the case of God-level design, faith is required.

That’s quite an entity to multiply into the explanation, don’t you think?

You’re trying to position “it just happened without design” as the null hypothesis - but that hypothesis is not only lacking evidence, but we have no unassumed experience of it. We do have impossible-to-ignore evidence of design.

That’s a naked beg to the question, of course. You say it’s impossible-to-ignore evidence of design (putatively implying a personal designer). Another says that same stuff is impossible-to-ignore evidence of emergent properties of an impersonal universe. That’s nothing more than pure assertion, standing alone like that.

But no matter. We needn’t commit to the “it just happened” as null hypothesis. It’s simply a competing hypothesis, which is enough to give it a leg up in terms of parsimony. In that sense, it is a kind of null hypothesis, but it earns its place on the basis of merit – explanatory economy, rather than caprice.

If we decide it’s just a hypothesis, like the theistic hypothesis is a hypothesis, prior to even weighing them in terms of parsimony, that’s fine with me. It’s “strong agnosticism” at that level, and that’s respectable in terms of reason.

A design hypothesis postulates a single entity - a Designer. But your response is an entity as well. The only difference is that yours lacks the one thing we’re aware of that is capable of organizing and creating. We have two entities as options - one of those entities is more justifiable. It is not yours.

The materialist doesn’t “multiply” entities, here. Nothing beyond what everyone agrees is in place – P-existence – is postulated or required. And for anyone who wants to get solipsistic on me here, I have a Bunsen burner that generates a nice blue flame to send you; see how much of your post you can recite while your finger is in the flame, if you suppose you can claim that reality is an invention or multiplied entity. I’m not saying you’re playing the solipsism card here, but I do get that a lot lately from Christians, when it becomes convenient to paint the commitment to reality being real as somehow dubious or frivolous.

Everyone – provably – agrees in the reality of P-existence. That’s unity gain from one side to the other. But theists go further. They accept the reality of reality, but also introduce (‘multiply’ per lex parsimonae) a fantastic new entity – God. You seem to suggest that God is somehow a very modest, humble introduction into the explanatory calculus, just “a single entity”. But it’s the omnimaximal entity – all encompassing, all powerful, all knowing. It’s unity (or Trinity perhaps) is singular because it exhausts all the rest of the phase space! It’s the theoretical max for additional explanatory resource – the theoretical mimimum in terms of parsimony, in other words.

It’s a single (while three) entity, but it’s the Big Kahuna of all entities.

By all means, provide the simulation. I’d love to see you create a sim where a circle is truly a triangle, and not in some cop out way.

There are no cop-outs in sim-worlds. That’s the nature of sim-worlds! They are perfectly plastic, which, I think, was the point you were trying to make. “IS” is a product of the ‘physics’ that inheres in the simulation, so it’s trivial to make ‘is’ accomodate whatever we like – dialethic logic is something the real world bucks hard against, but in a virtual sim-world, it’s a trifle.

Provide me a simulation where 2 + 2 = 4 while you’re at it.

That’s doesn’t even require, or attach, to simulation; that’s just tautology in action. We can define whatever symbolic calculus we want, right? We’re the ‘god’ of this sim-world, so symbols and their referents connect however we want them too. We can design it so that 2 + 2 = 4 (whatever those symbols mean, if anything in our sim-world), while 2 + 2 = 5 at the same time. Or not. Or only sometimes. Or at random times.

I said outright, it’s quite possible that there is no Designer, no God, etc. I repeated that this example does not prove anything beyond doubt. It simply establishes what’s the most reasonable inference based on available knowledge. You’re having trouble with the concept.

No, I get the idea. I think the problem obtains from producing “most reasonable inference” by having to introduce an omnimax supernatural entity to multiply into your explanation. You’ve just announce that “no Designer” is a logical possibility. If so, on the basis of economy, it’s decidedly more efficient than theism, as it skips all the overhead introduce by the concept of God as uber-explanation (and that’s a LOT of overhead!).

You should carefully read what I’ve been writing here, because I’ve said that this example does nothing to prove Christianity itself - hence my repeated inclusion of deism. And between you and me, I have as much respect for the ‘I was a Christian for X years and then became an atheist!’ line as ‘I was an atheist for X years and then became a Christian!’ line. It’s an attempt to establish credentials that are questionable to say the least.

I didn’t mean to present those as credentials of any sort of expertise here, but rather just a signal that I’m hip to “Christianese” equivocation. I managed to slip a lot by atheists and agnostics that way over the years as a Christian, and am just pointing out that I’m quite familiar with how that works in applied Christian apologetics.

I don’t think anything I’ve said needs to attach to the Christian God or any god in particular. So far as I can see, my words here have been supporting the idea that a) the very concept of “supernatural reality” is incoherent, and b) the materialist explanation is demonstrably more economical in terms of entities than any theistic one. Being more parsimonious doesn’t make an idea de jure correct. But if we can agree that theism is less parsimonious in terms of entities required, that would be progress, I think.

You’re right - the faith an atheist requires in this situation is a more difficult commitment than the faith required by a theist/deist.

I think you must have misunderstood me, then. The faith of an atheist is strictly necessary – compulsory. It can’t be avoided for a human that chooses to live and function in the world. That’s as minimal as you can get in terms of commitment. It’s literally doing the least you can do! Every theist also has this same faith – put your hand over open flame for a few seconds if you doubt this, and it will be viscerally clear what I mean, even as you affirm the reality of an invisible God.

Timeless and immaterial are completely coherent from the perspective of P. PRG is outside of time. PRG is not made out of any of the ‘material’ we know, the only material we can know. As I’ve said, even if PRG has some kind of ‘material’ reality, it really doesn’t matter for the deist/theist. At that point the discussion has moved beyond the question of the designer’s existence to questions of the designer’s properties. The atheist has no place in that discussion.

Agreed. If there is a designer, then the atheist hypothesist is falsified. All that remains is “shades of Designerism” at that point.

-Touchstone

 

[Touchstone]

short continuation from my previous response to nullasulas…

nullasalus:

Nor can we ever have a ‘match’, even if God does exist. Someone can always argue that a lesser, non-deity being - and one within our world, no less - is responsible for what we see. Did “I’m God, and I exist” get written on the moon in humongous letters? That’s no more proof of God than if I saw those words on an interstate billboard. It could have been some other intelligent entity, playing with us. Did we see a similar event which defies all known physical laws? Well, then clearly our knowledge of physical laws is merely incomplete. Or we’ve been tricked.

Assuming, arguendo, that you are correct, here, doesn’t this make theism absurd, then? As a matter of reasoning, you’re affirming that the program cannot reach out of its own stack frame. Even if the programmer wants to interact, it can only be conceptualized or dealt with cognitively in that context. Which should be a kind of “aha” moment, in thinking about it. I think you have snuck up on a profound insight, but haven’t yet seen (or accepted) its implications.

The problem you’re not recognizing is that, as an atheist, you’re relying on a designer as an explanation, just as I am. The difference is that your designer is mindless. Hence, “The Blind Watchmaker”. But the only evidence I certainly and undoubtedly have of creation and organization is that a mind is a fundamental requirement. ‘Mindless, fundamental design’ has no evidence - it’s a postulated philosophical, and frankly, theological construct.

Frankly, theological? Hmmm. Isn’t the “theo” in there a problem for a hypothesis that identifies no personal gods or designers?

Anyway, I can’t be bothered with word games. I’m happy to stimulate that the “universe is a designer”, if that’s the nomenclature you want to insist on, so long as we can understand that a “designer” may be a wholly impersonal, physical system. That’s fine by me, and that sense, I’d say the universe shows exquisitely complex and beautiful marks of being “designed”, and that includes you and me. Could God have designed something that fits with an impersonal designer hypothesis? I guess so, it’s always a possibility. But here is where you start painting God as superfluous, a rather obvious infusion of desire or other outside commitments. It’s not needed as part of a minimal, efficient, explanation – and that’s not even to raise all the questions implicated by such imports, theodicies and logical conundra by the bushel.

Thanks for the repsonse.

-Touchstone

 

[Nullasalus]

We don’t know that a mindless agent is capable of such things, at least in the strong epistemic sense of ‘know’; we can certainly watch designs happen from impersonal forces as proximal causes – a teardrop is ‘designed’ by the air as it falls, a mountain is “designed” by the weather, erosion, and drainage, as it ages, and animals and other organisms are ‘designed’ by the interaction of genetics, epigenetics and the environment over time, all without (ostensibly) any proximal telic intervention.

And the lack of design in every case you list - teardrop or mountain - is based entirely on assumption with no evidence to back it up. “Proximal” telic intervention or its lack proves nothing here, anymore than the lack of an intelligent agent stuffing molecules of sugar into bacteria is necessary to prove that fermentation is a telic process.

You can simulate a raincloud. If you pointed at the individual raindrop and said ‘See? Based on the properties of the program, this raindrop was shaped. No mind was necessary’, you’d be proving nothing.

But we don’t have to commit to knowing. We see that as a live option, and one that is increasingly fortified with each new piece of scientific theory that gets ratified by experience and testing. It’s in the phase space, and as such, is one that has a distinct parsimonious advantage – no supernatural deities need by multiplied into the explanation!

Science is doing no such thing - that’s popular atheist myth, baseless. No amount of scientific discovery ever indicates that nature is operating without origin or support of a mind; that’s not only a philosophical proposition, but one utterly lacking in evidence. Further, every scientific discovery is one more bit of nature shown to be rational, cognizable, and therefore entirely subject to creation and institution by a designer. And we do know that design does exist.

In other words, science provides intellectual compatibility with both hypotheses. But only one of them, design, comes with readily verifiable evidence. And only one of them, atheism, is forever lacking such evidence, and must by its nature. Design wins.

That’s a naked beg to the question, of course. You say it’s impossible-to-ignore evidence of design (putatively implying a personal designer). Another says that same stuff is impossible-to-ignore evidence of emergent properties of an impersonal universe. That’s nothing more than pure assertion, standing alone like that.

You misunderstand. I’m not saying it’s undeniable that a mountain, or a lack, or the planet Jupiter was designed. But your response was, your computer was, your room was, your power lines were, your garden was, etc. Design certainly exists. We know what design could explain about our world - everything.

Meanwhile, fundamental mindlessness - physical reality that just happens to exist, has nothing like thought, and just happens to have the necessary properties to give rise to both the universe and design-capable agents - could explain everything. But there is no evidence. The best you can come up with are assumptions; ‘I can imagine the forces responsible for this raindrop popped out of nowhere thanks to luck’. Not very convincing.

But no matter. We needn’t commit to the “it just happened” as null hypothesis. It’s simply a competing hypothesis, which is enough to give it a leg up in terms of parsimony. In that sense, it is a kind of null hypothesis, but it earns its place on the basis of merit – explanatory economy, rather than caprice.

If we decide it’s just a hypothesis, like the theistic hypothesis is a hypothesis, prior to even weighing them in terms of parsimony, that’s fine with me. It’s “strong agnosticism” at that level, and that’s respectable in terms of reason.

It doesn’t even have explanatory economy. Deism has explanatory economy - it recognizes the clear power of design, the undeniable fact that design does exist (even ateista admitted to this), and its capability to explain all we see. Atheism requires assumptions of luck writ large, and a force that we have no evidence of - just something we could imagine fundamentally existing.

Deism best qualifies as the null hypothesis.

The materialist doesn’t “multiply” entities, here. Nothing beyond what everyone agrees is in place – P-existence – is postulated or required.

Considering you went on to give an example of solipsism, and I assume you’ve heard of idealism, not ‘everyone agrees’ in P-existence. Not even atheists do; Bertrand Russell was as close as you can get to a philosophical enemy of Christianity, but he wasn’t a materialist. He was a neutral monist. In other words, even people who agree that P-existence exists can’t agree on what P-existence is.

But put that aside. The origin of P-existence is still a question. For an atheist materialist, the possible answers are “it eternally existed and innately had the properties to give rise to everything that exists” (unverifiable, goes against current scientific data, design question remains wide open even in an eternal cosmological view) and “it popped out of nothingness, uncaused” (unverifiable, questionable, goes against reason). These are entities being proposed, descriptions of fundamental sources. Both the theist and the atheist are proposing entities, and those entities have aspects we can’t be certain of truly existing. But insofar as we’re discussing fundamental creative forces, the deist’s proposal fits what we know, and therefore reason, better. The atheist’s requires far more assumption, and lacks comparable evidence.

Everyone – provably – agrees in the reality of P-existence. That’s unity gain from one side to the other. But theists go further. They accept the reality of reality, but also introduce (‘multiply’ per lex parsimonae) a fantastic new entity – God. You seem to suggest that God is somehow a very modest, humble introduction into the explanatory calculus, just “a single entity”. But it’s the omnimaximal entity – all encompassing, all powerful, all knowing. It’s unity (or Trinity perhaps) is singular because it exhausts all the rest of the phase space! It’s the theoretical max for additional explanatory resource – the theoretical mimimum in terms of parsimony, in other words.

I didn’t say it was modest or humble. I did say it was vastly more justifiable compared to what the atheist must propose. The atheist creative force is all powerful (It created all things in existence, from atoms to galaxies to universes), all encompassing (Again, it created all things in existence, and nothing can exist without being created by it), and what’s more, it pulls this off while fundamentally lacking a mind. It’s omnipotence, and omniscience is replaced with luck. It even performs miracles; adherents simply argue that the odds must be larger than they seem to be.

In other words, it’s every bit as much of a “Big Kahuna” as God, but without any of the justification or familiarity with reason and evidence.

That’s doesn’t even require, or attach, to simulation; that’s just tautology in action. We can define whatever symbolic calculus we want, right? We’re the ‘god’ of this sim-world, so symbols and their referents connect however we want them too. We can design it so that 2 + 2 = 4 (whatever those symbols mean, if anything in our sim-world), while 2 + 2 = 5 at the same time. Or not. Or only sometimes. Or at random times.

Fantastic. Requesting again a simulation that does this, please.

The fact that you can honestly argue that you can create a simulation where 2+2=5 and it’s not a cop out indicates to me you haven’t thought this through. It requires more than making sure every calculator in sim-world turns up ‘5’ when they put ‘2+2’ into a calculator.

No, I get the idea. I think the problem obtains from producing “most reasonable inference” by having to introduce an omnimax supernatural entity to multiply into your explanation. You’ve just announce that “no Designer” is a logical possibility. If so, on the basis of economy, it’s decidedly more efficient than theism, as it skips all the overhead introduce by the concept of God as uber-explanation (and that’s a LOT of overhead!).

Classic atheist mistake. “No designer” is not “the lack of a creative force”. It’s the introduction of a force every bit as potent and all-explaining as God, yet lacking a mind. If you’re operating under the illusion that “any explanation that involves less entities is simpler and therefore preferred”, I have two responses. One is that solipsism is the simplest explanation of all, and despite what you think, ‘Bunsen burners are hot’ doesn’t do a thing to the logical validity of the explanation. Two, Occam’s Razor was Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” In other words, simplicity itself is only a virtue if the facts of the matter don’t strongly indicate the need for more entities. And good ol’ Occam believed in God.

And this is all besides the point; The atheist argues in favor of an additional entity, just as the theist does. It all comes down to fundamental origin, the ultimate creative source of all that exists. The atheist proposes a source, just as the theist does. The atheist’s is the less reasonable proposal.

 

[Nullasalus]

I didn’t mean to present those as credentials of any sort of expertise here, but rather just a signal that I’m hip to “Christianese” equivocation. I managed to slip a lot by atheists and agnostics that way over the years as a Christian, and am just pointing out that I’m quite familiar with how that works in applied Christian apologetics.

Wonderful. You’ve just told me that you’re an experienced liar, and what’s more, you’re stubborn to the point of being able to engage in self-deception on the order of decades. All in the hopes of insinuating that theists are self-deceiving liars. I’ll be sure to make a note of that.

So far as I can see, my words here have been supporting the idea that a) the very concept of “supernatural reality” is incoherent

You’ve done no such thing. In fact, by admitting to the rationality of simulations in both the sim-existence case and the PRG-existence case, you’ve ceded that such a conception of “supernatural reality” is entirely reasonable. You do realize that there’s no firm universal definition of the supernatural, yes? It’s something even theologians of the same faith argue about.

b) the materialist explanation is demonstrably more economical in terms of entities than any theistic one.

You’ve failed terribly on this count. And you’re conflating atheism with materialism; atheists need not be materialists.

Assuming, arguendo, that you are correct, here, doesn’t this make theism absurd, then? As a matter of reasoning, you’re affirming that the program cannot reach out of its own stack frame. Even if the programmer wants to interact, it can only be conceptualized or dealt with cognitively in that context. Which should be a kind of “aha” moment, in thinking about it. I think you have snuck up on a profound insight, but haven’t yet seen (or accepted) its implications.

It by no means makes theism absurd; it illustrates that if God truly does exist, someone can always find a reason to deny, just as a solipsist can always have a reason to deny the outside world even if the outside world does exist. I did not say no person could come to accept that God or a programmer exists - that’s obviously inane.

There’s a profound insight there, but you’re the one missing it.

Frankly, theological? Hmmm. Isn’t the “theo” in there a problem for a hypothesis that identifies no personal gods or designers?

Considering 1/4th of the atheists in a recent US poll said they believe in God, it’d be news to some atheists. Further, I’m asserting that many atheists are wholly ignorant of just what is entailed by the position they hold. I think this has become more obvious through this conversation.

Anyway, I can’t be bothered with word games. I’m happy to stimulate that the “universe is a designer”, if that’s the nomenclature you want to insist on, so long as we can understand that a “designer” may be a wholly impersonal, physical system.

You’re confusing ‘the universe’ with ‘the origin of the universe.’ They’re not the same thing. Again, you have two options as an atheist: “Popped out of nothingness and luckily it had all the right properties to give rise to be coherent, last long, and give rise to life and life that realizes the power of design” or “Existed eternally, lucked out and had all the right properties to continue to exist for eternity and give rise to all we know, and mind did not co-exist with it”. I don’t envy the intellectual position; takes too much mind-bending.

 

[CatsAndDogs]

Everyone – provably – agrees in the reality of P-existence. That’s unity gain from one side to the other.

But theists go further. They accept the reality of reality, but also introduce (‘multiply’ per lex parsimonae) a fantastic new entity – God. You seem to suggest that God is somehow a very modest, humble introduction into the explanatory calculus, just “a single entity”. But it’s the omnimaximal entity – all encompassing, all powerful, all knowing.

And God’s omnipotence is the only reason that He IS introduced as a solution, while the so-called atheist has no solution, to the question of “creation”.

Only an omnipotent being (designer), where “omnipotent” means capable of absolute manipulation of ANY thing within OUR material world (including our “time”), would be capable of creating a sub-material world, or rather a “derivative-material” world, ours, from “nothing”, where our material is truly simply a “weaving” of some substrate material which to us is a perfect description of NOTHING because we have no means of sensing it.

For us “woven characters made of knots” on the tapestry composed of knotted twine, capable of sensing the interaction between the knots but not capable of sensing the twine itself, it is “creation ex nihilo” for the designing weaver to have woven our tapestry from the “nothing” of the twine.

What the atheist proposes is that material order (our material) either eternally (infinitely) exists, or that it is “created” ex nihilo for an uncaused reason.

My proposition, which no one is called upon to accept, is that whenever an “infinitude” is evoked, it is a simple “cop out” (an invocation of the “god of giving up on finding a solution”) which renders any infinity-evoking “solution” a non-solution, and merely “pushes back” the problem to avoid having to face it.

The so-called atheistic “material order has always (infnitely) existed” is a simple dodge to avoid the question, and is “theological” (religious) in it’s nature in that it has “faith” that it’s OK to not address the problem of creation in anything but (our) materialistic terms.

The so-called atheistic “order simple arose from non-order” is simply a restatement of the theological concept of creation from nothing, with the (bizarre) twist that nothing did the work of creating creation.

It’s unity (or Trinity perhaps) is singular because it exhausts all the rest of the phase space! It’s the theoretical max for additional explanatory resource – the theoretical mimimum in terms of parsimony, in other words.

It’s a single (while three) entity, but it’s the Big Kahuna of all entities.

Absolutely! That is why God is God, and not some god.

The materialist objects to God as being “too powerful”, and then complains that there is no entity (mind) powerful enough to do what God must be able to do.

It could easily be said that we humans are TOO POWERFUL, from a sims point of view, to have created ALL EXISTENCE (some sim universe), because a sim has no way to understand how we humans can “weave” our thoughts into their “existence”.

 

[CatsAndDogs]

Quote:
I said outright, it’s quite possible that there is no Designer, no God, etc. I repeated that this example does not prove anything beyond doubt. It simply establishes what’s the most reasonable inference based on available knowledge. You’re having trouble with the concept.

No, I get the idea. I think the problem obtains from producing “most reasonable inference” by having to introduce an omnimax supernatural entity to multiply into your explanation.

You’ve just announce that “no Designer” is a logical possibility. If so, on the basis of economy, it’s decidedly more efficient than theism, as it skips all the overhead introduce by the concept of God as uber-explanation (and that’s a LOT of overhead!).

Do you understand the difference between ANSWERING a question and AVOIDING a question?

The “economy of the No-Designer” proposition is to simply NOT answer the question of creation. That is more ECONOMICAL of the “answer’s” (the materialist’s) TIME and energy because it doesn’t even attempt to formulate an answer.

It is NOT a more economical ANSWER to the question, though!

The so-called atheist’s position is like saying that it’s more “economical” to never drive to the store for food because doing so uses less gasoline.

The problem with that “economy” is that one needs FOOD, not fewer coin spent on gasoline!

 

[Touchstone]

And the lack of design in every case you list - teardrop or mountain - is based entirely on assumption with no evidence to back it up. “Proximal” telic intervention or its lack proves nothing here, anymore than the lack of an intelligent agent stuffing molecules of sugar into bacteria is necessary to prove that fermentation is a telic process.

Well, out with it, then. What would you consider evidence that supports the impersonal design hypothesis? You said previously:

“I said outright, it’s quite possible that there is no Designer, no God, etc.”

If you believe that, what would be evidence or test-based support for that conclusion? It’s true that there’s no phenomenon that cannot have cosmic teleology overlaid it – we can suppose that God is ultimately the designer of the raindrop, so long as we can appeal far enough up the chain to cross over into metaphysic.

But it doesn’t stop there. We can wonder who designed God, and there’s similarly no falsifying the idea that someone designed God, and God just isn’t aware. And the God-Designer has a designer too, we might suppose, and it’s impossible to discount that possibility, and on and on and on…

This is a poverty rather than a strength. That’s why liability to falsification is so important; without it, you not narrowed your phase space for solutions at all. In any case, you suggest that there is some kind of evidence needed to show that God doesn’t exist as a telic substrate for something like the design of a raindrop falling through the air. What evidence would suffice for you to support this, I wonder?

You can simulate a raincloud. If you pointed at the individual raindrop and said ‘See? Based on the properties of the program, this raindrop was shaped. No mind was necessary’, you’d be proving nothing.

You are just announcing that your beliefs aren’t liable to falsification, even in principle. That’s fine, and I’m content to simply agree that you’ve got a nice belief framework that’s perfect immune to falsification and leave it at that. I’m not supposing I can prove anything like you’re supposing, like the proposition that God does not exist. My contention is that that’s a nonsense demand on its face.

Science is doing no such thing - that’s popular atheist myth, baseless. No amount of scientific discovery ever indicates that nature is operating without origin or support of a mind; that’s not only a philosophical proposition, but one utterly lacking in evidence. Further, every scientific discovery is one more bit of nature shown to be rational, cognizable, and therefore entirely subject to creation and institution by a designer. And we do know that design does exist.

More signaling of the immunity of your beliefs from possible falsification.

What forms of design do we know to exist that does not include the identification of a designer, and by that just the humble observationt that the designer is actually extant? Design theology is categorically different from the design inference made from the connection between chipped stone arrowheads and the bones of hominids found just a few meters away. There, we have evidence of the actuality of a designer that justifies the conclusion of design. That predicate is conspicuously lacking in theism.

In other words, science provides intellectual compatibility with both hypotheses. But only one of them, design, comes with readily verifiable evidence. And only one of them, atheism, is forever lacking such evidence, and must by its nature. Design wins.

So, you are saying atheism lacks evidence for the “non-existence of God”? That’s what I’m getting out of this paragraph, but maybe I misunderstand. If I do have that right, let me know what would suffice as “evidence for non-existence” as opposed to just “lack of evidence for existence”. Do you suppose there exists a burden of proof to show that God doesn’t exist? That’s a curious (and I think self-serving) assignment of burdens, there, as that would have me bearing the burden of “proving the non-existence” of celestial teapots and cosmic unicorns right along with it.

The claim for existence of a thing bears the burden for supporting that claim. Claims of non-existence are falsifiable – by production of the thing denied, the claims of non-existence are thus falsified. But there is no “positive proof for non-existence”, as it’s a logical impossibility for beings with finite knowledge – it’s the idea pointed at by the colloquial quip that you ‘can’t prove a negative’.

You misunderstand. I’m not saying it’s undeniable that a mountain, or a lack, or the planet Jupiter was designed. But your response was, your computer was, your room was, your power lines were, your garden was, etc. Design certainly exists. We know what design could explain about our world - everything.

Sure. God explains everything. Anything and all things. That’s the basic utility of the concept of God!

We do not, so far as I know, understand design to exist without an associated designer being available empirically. The kind of design concept you are advancing here does not exist in practice, outside of theology. “Arrowhead-ish” stones from the pre-Cambrian strata are not identified as “design artifacts”, even if their geometry is quite compatible with a man-made arrowhead, simply because there’s no plausible designers in view for pre-Cambrian time frames. We instead conclude that perhaps our “strata identification” is possibly mistaken, or that this particular object is just coincidentally similar to a man-made arrowhead. The design inference exists, in any case, on the strength of the connection between available designers with design capabilities, and the phenomena that are compatible with those agents/capabilities.

Meanwhile, fundamental mindlessness - physical reality that just happens to exist, has nothing like thought, and just happens to have the necessary properties to give rise to both the universe and design-capable agents - could explain everything.

The observations and knowledge we have available are terribly restrictive, in contrast to the plasticity of an omnipotent, arbitrary deity. The “impersonal design” hypothesis may be incorrect, but it’s very, very limited in what it can use to explain phenomena. If it is impersonal, then it is automatic, or more precisely, a set of automata, by definition. That means you can’t simply suppose “that’s what God wants, I don’t know why” as a sustaining part of the explanation, which is something totally available to theists.

But there is no evidence. The best you can come up with are assumptions; ‘I can imagine the forces responsible for this raindrop popped out of nowhere thanks to luck’. Not very convincing.

You keep coming back to the problem of “evidence for non-existence”. Again, I ask: what would you consider “evidence for non-existence”? What would be reasonable basis for concluding a thing does not exist?

It doesn’t even have explanatory economy. Deism has explanatory economy - it recognizes the clear power of design, the undeniable fact that design does exist (even ateista admitted to this), and its capability to explain all we see. Atheism requires assumptions of luck writ large, and a force that we have no evidence of - just something we could imagine fundamentally existing.

This is the basis for the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a rhetorical device. It’s completely, admittedly made up, and yet has perfect explanatory power! It’s weakness is only it’s “made-up-ness”. It’s important to realize that “capability to explain” apart from grounding in actuality is epistemically void. We can suppose all manner of “capable explanations” if we are unbound by the demands of showing the actuality of the agents and forces introduced by that explanation.

And with respect to explanatory economy, I believe you are missing what is meant by ‘entity’ in terms of the principle of parsimony. Deism is no more economical than Christian theism - it still posits a new entity beyond the universe, a creative god of some sort. The fact that this god is absent now is not relevant at all to the parsimony of the deistic idea of creation. It still requires the introduction of an additional entity into the explanation, over and above what is required in an atheistic explanation.

Deism best qualifies as the null hypothesis.

??? Why would that be?

Considering you went on to give an example of solipsism, and I assume you’ve heard of idealism, not ‘everyone agrees’ in P-existence. Not even atheists do; Bertrand Russell was as close as you can get to a philosophical enemy of Christianity, but he wasn’t a materialist. He was a neutral monist. In other words, even people who agree that P-existence exists can’t agree on what P-existence is.

Which is fine. Agreement on what it is isn’t necessary to affirm that it is. Whatever adornments you want to point on your view of P-existence, at the end of the day, the hand over the Bunsen burner flame unifies all, and demonstrates the unanimity of all men in affirming the basic reality of P-existence.

-Touchstone

 

[Touchstone]

nullasalus:

But put that aside. The origin of P-existence is still a question. For an atheist materialist, the possible answers are “it eternally existed and innately had the properties to give rise to everything that exists” (unverifiable, goes against current scientific data, design question remains wide open even in an eternal cosmological view) and “it popped out of nothingness, uncaused” (unverifiable, questionable, goes against reason). These are entities being proposed, descriptions of fundamental sources. Both the theist and the atheist are proposing entities, and those entities have aspects we can’t be certain of truly existing. But insofar as we’re discussing fundamental creative forces, the deist’s proposal fits what we know, and therefore reason, better. The atheist’s requires far more assumption, and lacks comparable evidence.

It’s quite different. Theists are positing an additional entity – a creative deity that exists wholly apart from P-existence itself. For Christians (not the only theists, of course), God is distinct from creation. Creation and God are two (2) different entities.

In the materialist view, there is a unity, and only the physical universe. That’s one(1) entity at the top level required for the explanation rather than theism’s (2). Unless you suppose that theists do not admit the distinction between “god” and “creation”, in the style of Spinoza or Einstein, the theistic (2) has greater cardinality than the atheistic (1) in terms of entities. An atheistic explanation may be incorrect, but it’s manifestly more minimal in terms of required entities than theism, which gives it a nod in terms of parsimony.

I didn’t say it was modest or humble. I did say it was vastly more justifiable compared to what the atheist must propose. The atheist creative force is all powerful (It created all things in existence, from atoms to galaxies to universes), all encompassing (Again, it created all things in existence, and nothing can exist without being created by it), and what’s more, it pulls this off while fundamentally lacking a mind. It’s omnipotence, and omniscience is replaced with luck. It even performs miracles; adherents simply argue that the odds must be larger than they seem to be.

In other words, it’s every bit as much of a “Big Kahuna” as God, but without any of the justification or familiarity with reason and evidence.

It’s neither distinct as an additional entity - which God is – nor is the physical universe “creative” in a telic sense. These are clear additions on top of materialist minimalism, which supposes that the explanation obtains from P-existence itself, internally. It’s “small ball” as explanations go, which is why theists object – it recognizes no necessity for any “Big Kahuna-ness”, or omnimaximal anything.

Fantastic. Requesting again a simulation that does this, please.

Are you asking for source code? Compiled software? A description? Do you doubt that a software developer can build in whatever propositional calculus into a created system she wishes?

The fact that you can honestly argue that you can create a simulation where 2+2=5 and it’s not a cop out indicates to me you haven’t thought this through. It requires more than making sure every calculator in sim-world turns up ‘5’ when they put ‘2+2’ into a calculator.

No, that’s precisely what a sim-world enables for us. A sim-world of our own making throws the gates completely open. A ‘virtual calculator’ in a newly devised sim-world can easily affirm that 2+2=4 and 2+2=5. Those are just symbols, and in sim-world, we have complete control over the referents. So we can mess with it as much as we want. As I said, we aren’t even bound to the Law of Identity in our sim-world. A and ~A can simultaneously be true, if we so desire, as ‘true’ is itself an artifact of our design in sim-world.

The only way your objection makes sense is if you demand that our sim-world operating according to the constraints of our P-existence. But that’s precisely the point you’ve been resisting from ateista – that the sim-world (which may be our P-existence from one frame of reference) must be consistent with the design environment that created it.

Classic atheist mistake. “No designer” is not “the lack of a creative force”. It’s the introduction of a force every bit as potent and all-explaining as God, yet lacking a mind. If you’re operating under the illusion that “any explanation that involves less entities is simpler and therefore preferred”, I have two responses. One is that solipsism is the simplest explanation of all, and despite what you think, ‘Bunsen burners are hot’ doesn’t do a thing to the logical validity of the explanation.

Agreed. The flame on your hand establishes the practical necessity of the the affirmation of the reality of P-existence, not the logical necessity of it. It’s not logically necessary, but it is practically necessary, making Cartesian solipsism irrelevant as a practical matter. We have faith in the reality of reality, and it is unreasoned commitment – faith. But we embrace it because we must, as a practical matter.

Two, Occam’s Razor was Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem or “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” In other words, simplicity itself is only a virtue if the facts of the matter don’t strongly indicate the need for more entities. And good ol’ Occam believed in God.

Sure. I think I quoted that above. As Einstein would say: “make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Newtonian physics
is a good example – simpler and more economical in many respects, but inadequate as a matter of performance. Relativity calculated the orbit and projected location of Mercury with astounding accuracy as opposed to the predictions made by Newtonian physics.

But the performance of the explanations is what’s at issue, or should be. Apparently, you are still determined to deny the economical advantage of materialism, and are trying to maintain that materialism has the same entities as theism? If we can agree that materialism requires less entities as explananda, then we may have accomplished something at least, here, and can then look to see if materialism is ‘too simple’ or not.

And this is all besides the point; The atheist argues in favor of an additional entity, just as the theist does. It all comes down to fundamental origin, the ultimate creative source of all that exists. The atheist proposes a source, just as the theist does. The atheist’s is the less reasonable proposal.

Materialism supposes a unity – a single entity – whereas the theist finds ontological distinctions between the universe and God – making at least two (2) entities part of the explanation where the materialist requires just one(1). What is this ‘additional entity’ you say the atheist argues in favor of? My understanding is that the universe is explanatory in itself, that the complexity and differentiation and development we observe are innate, emergent properties of the universe itself. That may be incorrect, but it’s not multiplying entities either way.

-Touchstone

 

[Touchstone]

And God’s omnipotence is the only reason that He IS introduced as a solution, while the so-called atheist has no solution, to the question of “creation”.

Only an omnipotent being (designer), where “omnipotent” means capable of absolute manipulation of ANY thing within OUR material world (including our “time”), would be capable of creating a sub-material world, or rather a “derivative-material” world, ours, from “nothing”, where our material is truly simply a “weaving” of some substrate material which to us is a perfect description of NOTHING because we have no means of sensing it.

For us “woven characters made of knots” on the tapestry composed of knotted twine, capable of sensing the interaction between the knots but not capable of sensing the twine itself, it is “creation ex nihilo” for the designing weaver to have woven our tapestry from the “nothing” of the twine.

What the atheist proposes is that material order (our material) either eternally (infinitely) exists, or that it is “created” ex nihilo for an uncaused reason.

My proposition, which no one is called upon to accept, is that whenever an “infinitude” is evoked, it is a simple “cop out” (an invocation of the “god of giving up on finding a solution”) which renders any infinity-evoking “solution” a non-solution, and merely “pushes back” the problem to avoid having to face it.

Theism doesn’t help in this regard. As a Christian, my answer was to invoke God as the infinitude, as the Uncaused Cause. When an atheist asked me “who caused God”, I had to resort to precisely what you are calling a “cop out” in delivering a theistic answer. Who made God? Noone, of course!

Somehow, as a theist, I was granted a free pass in introducing uncaused causes, a pass I wasn’t willing to grant to other uncaused causes. If God can be uncaused, then why would anything else be denied “uncaused existence”?

This is a conundrum for theists, and devolves down to precisely the delivery of the kind of ‘cop outs’ they decry. If you dispute this, then tell me who caused God, and how you know that’s the case.

The so-called atheistic “material order has always (infnitely) existed” is a simple dodge to avoid the question, and is “theological” (religious) in it’s nature in that it has “faith” that it’s OK to not address the problem of creation in anything but (our) materialistic terms.

We have coherent concepts with which to approach the natural world – materialism. We can understand “exists” to mean something like “extended in space/time”, a short yet very robust measure for separating what exists from what doesn’t exist, conceptually. That definition may not be complete, but it is at least coherent, meaningful. When looking at the question of ‘creation’ – a loaded term in its own right, but certainly more compact than something like ‘coming-into-existence’ – we are not avoiding the question by admitting we have no epistemic basis for understanding those metaphysics. That’s why we put the ‘meta-’ in front of the ‘physics’, there; it transcends our conceptual and epistemic capabilities.

The so-called atheistic “order simple arose from non-order” is simply a restatement of the theological concept of creation from nothing, with the (bizarre) twist that nothing did the work of creating creation.

It’s only ‘bizarre’ as a matter of anthropomorphising the natural world. Inside this universe, it looks very much like something does NOT come from nothing – matter is conserved, so far as we can tell, for example. But that has absolutely no bearing on the outer context, and is not justified as a metaphysical constraint. To say that "something cannot come from nothing*, as a matter of metaphysics rather than physics is impossible to do defend, pure caprice.

The materialist objects to God as being “too powerful”, and then complains that there is no entity (mind) powerful enough to do what God must be able to do.

I’m not aware of that as an objection. I think the objection is that God is not verifiable as existing, or even bring with Him a concept of “exist” that is nominally coherent.

It could easily be said that we humans are TOO POWERFUL, from a sims point of view, to have created ALL EXISTENCE (some sim universe), because a sim has no way to understand how we humans can “weave” our thoughts into their “existence”.

Sorry, didn’t understand that paragraph!

-Touchstone

 

[Touchstone]

Do you understand the difference between ANSWERING a question and AVOIDING a question?

I think I do. The question is an intractable one – even in principle. We don’t have access to “metaphysical knowledge”, and thus are completely unjustified in any conclusions we may arrive at about how the outer context – the layer above P-existence, if any – works.

If I ask you what number results from dividing 1 by 0, I suppose I could claim that you were “avoiding the question” when you answered “undefined” or “not-a-number”. But that would just be an expression of a conceptual failing on my part.

The “economy of the No-Designer” proposition is to simply NOT answer the question of creation. That is more ECONOMICAL of the “answer’s” (the materialist’s) TIME and energy because it doesn’t even attempt to formulate an answer.

I think it’s quite the opposite, actually. For me, supposing that God – an impassible God, at that – was the answer was sufficient – that’s the beauty and the curse of over-powerful answers. But on the materialist view, we have very little to work with. There’s no “Goddidit” hand waving to do – you have the observed dynamics of nature working as impersonal automata, and that’s it. Explaining the development of man as a biological organism requires enormous investments of research, digging, analysis, testing, as there are no miracles or divine fiats to appeal to. Miracles makes anything a snap. Developing an explanation based on natural law for something so complex as a human is a lot of work.

But the economy I was speaking of had nothing to do with being lazy or evasive, but efficient in getting the most explanation and performance out of the least entities and resources.

It is NOT a more economical ANSWER to the question, though!

The so-called atheist’s position is like saying that it’s more “economical” to never drive to the store for food because doing so uses less gasoline.

The problem with that “economy” is that one needs FOOD, not fewer coin spent on gasoline!

That’s a problem, then, as if your analogy holds, we NEED to know the metaphysics of creation. Yet, we aren’t in a position, conceptually, epistemically to even hope for such an answer. It’s far over the event horizon for humans. We can make leaps of faith, and entertain all manner of conjecture, but that’s all the farther we can get, because the foundations of knowledge do not extend into metaphysics – that’s why we call it “metaphysics”.

If we MUST know the constraints and dynamics of the outer context for the origination of the universe, if any, we have an insuperable problem, because “know” is an intrisic to the universe itself, and we’ve no basis for supposing that “know” has any meaning at all beyond it.

-Touchstone

 

[Nullasalus]

Well, out with it, then. What would you consider evidence that supports the impersonal design hypothesis? You said previously:

“I said outright, it’s quite possible that there is no Designer, no God, etc.”

If you believe that, what would be evidence or test-based support for that conclusion?

There is none. Certainly not on the order we have for design. That you’re having to ask me for it without trying to provide any of your highlights it.

What makes you think you need evidence for a proposition for the proposition to be true? It’s a question of what’s reasonable to believe.

But it doesn’t stop there. We can wonder who designed God, and there’s similarly no falsifying the idea that someone designed God, and God just isn’t aware. And the God-Designer has a designer too, we might suppose, and it’s impossible to discount that possibility, and on and on and on…

Yep. These questions, no matter which way they are decided, entail some faith. I’ve repeated that throughout this conversation.

This is a poverty rather than a strength. That’s why liability to falsification is so important; without it, you not narrowed your phase space for solutions at all. In any case, you suggest that there is some kind of evidence needed to show that God doesn’t exist as a telic substrate for something like the design of a raindrop falling through the air. What evidence would suffice for you to support this, I wonder?

I never suggested this. In fact, I said such evidence was not possible. Are you sure you’re reading my posts?

You are just announcing that your beliefs aren’t liable to falsification, even in principle.

Your beliefs aren’t subject to falsification either. Hell, you agreed with as much down where you agreed that, even if God does exist, someone can always offer up a non-God explanation even if it’s an agent.

At this point I have to ask: Are you suggesting ‘being open to falsification’ is a standard for philosophy? Or that science is capable of providing a falsifiable standard to ultimate origins questions? Have you even thought this through?

What forms of design do we know to exist that does not include the identification of a designer, and by that just the humble observationt that the designer is actually extant? Design theology is categorically different from the design inference made from the connection between chipped stone arrowheads and the bones of hominids found just a few meters away. There, we have evidence of the actuality of a designer that justifies the conclusion of design. That predicate is conspicuously lacking in theism.

You’re the one who brought up SETI - they’re looking for aliens they’ve never met, based on standards entirely human in origin. But hell, place that aside; Again, I’ve said that the design question at the level of the universe - fundamental design - differs from design questions at levels beneath it. You keep making this weird mix-up between philosophy and science, as if they’re both the same thing with the same standards.

So, you are saying atheism lacks evidence for the “non-existence of God”? That’s what I’m getting out of this paragraph, but maybe I misunderstand. If I do have that right, let me know what would suffice as “evidence for non-existence” as opposed to just “lack of evidence for existence”. Do you suppose there exists a burden of proof to show that God doesn’t exist? That’s a curious (and I think self-serving) assignment of burdens, there, as that would have me bearing the burden of “proving the non-existence” of celestial teapots and cosmic unicorns right along with it.

Nope. I’m saying the creative force that atheism presupposes - mindless and/or eternal and lucky ultimate origins - not only has zero evidence, but evidence can never be provided for it due to the nature of the claim. It’s a celestial teapot for the atheist. But some design is immediately supported just by virtue of our having subjective experience and designs. I can claim further support in the world, from computers to simulations to forum posts to statues to, etc.

Sure. God explains everything. Anything and all things. That’s the basic utility of the concept of God!

And so does the atheist creative force. It has all the power of God, but lacks a mind.

We do not, so far as I know, understand design to exist without an associated designer being available empirically. The kind of design concept you are advancing here does not exist in practice, outside of theology.

Outside of philosophy, perhaps. You keep wanting to go back to stone arrowheads, but again and again I’ll repeat - we know design exists. By your own words, we know design can explain the universe itself with no logical problems. Your counter to design is either brute luck, eternity, and/or a combination of the two. We have vastly less experience with such entities even existing at all, especially when compared to design. Ergo, design’s more reasonable.

The observations and knowledge we have available are terribly restrictive, in contrast to the plasticity of an omnipotent, arbitrary deity. The “impersonal design” hypothesis may be incorrect, but it’s very, very limited in what it can use to explain phenomena. If it is impersonal, then it is automatic, or more precisely, a set of automata, by definition. That means you can’t simply suppose “that’s what God wants, I don’t know why” as a sustaining part of the explanation, which is something totally available to theists.

And you can simply suppose ‘because that’s a law of nature, it’s a brute fact’ as an atheist. Moreover, our observations and knowledge are hardly restrictive. Especially in the context of a simulation from the perspective of the programmer.

You keep coming back to the problem of “evidence for non-existence”. Again, I ask: what would you consider “evidence for non-existence”? What would be reasonable basis for concluding a thing does not exist?

I didn’t address ‘evidence for non-existence’. Nowhere in this thread have I asserted that the atheist most prove that God doesn’t exist. On the contrary, I’ve said that atheists can provide no evidence for the positive claim of mindless fundamental physical luck / eternity as a creative force, especially compared to suggesting design.

This is the basis for the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a rhetorical device. It’s completely, admittedly made up, and yet has perfect explanatory power! It’s weakness is only it’s “made-up-ness”. It’s important to realize that “capability to explain” apart from grounding in actuality is epistemically void. We can suppose all manner of “capable explanations” if we are unbound by the demands of showing the actuality of the agents and forces introduced by that explanation.

The FSM is nothing more than ‘God’ with a silly picture attached. It is utterly without intellectual utility aside from mockery. That so many people take it seriously says more about the sad state of reason than anything else.

And with respect to explanatory economy, I believe you are missing what is meant by ‘entity’ in terms of the principle of parsimony. Deism is no more economical than Christian theism - it still posits a new entity beyond the universe, a creative god of some sort. The fact that this god is absent now is not relevant at all to the parsimony of the deistic idea of creation. It still requires the introduction of an additional entity into the explanation, over and above what is required in an atheistic explanation.

The atheist requires an additional entity as well - no matter how many times you deny this, it’s going to remain the case. Both the deist/theist and the atheist propose an entity capable of originating and organizing the universe. What differs between them is the presence of the one thing we are certain is capable of providing origins and organization - mind. Otherwise, the origin for the atheist either stretches back into eternity, or stretches back to a particular point with no explanation other than ‘brute fact’ and ‘we got luck’. There’s an entity, a creative force and event. The deist/theist’s is vastly more reasonable, and actually has some undeniable evidence.

??? Why would that be?

Because both atheism and deism provide an entity to explain the same thing, but we know that the essential feature of deism (mind) both exists and is capable of originating and organizing. Compare that with atheism, for which we don’t have such evidence, but we can kinda-sorta imagine it.

Which is fine. Agreement on what it is isn’t necessary to affirm that it is. Whatever adornments you want to point on your view of P-existence, at the end of the day, the hand over the Bunsen burner flame unifies all, and demonstrates the unanimity of all men in affirming the basic reality of P-existence.

If the basic reality of P-existence is affirmed whether we’re Berkeleyan idealists, Russelian neutral monists, Cartesian dualists, Dennett materialists, Kim physicalists, or elsewise - P-existence is already hilarious. Again, if you’re honestly telling me that you can disprove solipsism or even idealism with a bunsen burner, it’s clear you don’t even understand what’s going on with the idea.

 

[Nullasalus]

It’s quite different. Theists are positing an additional entity – a creative deity that exists wholly apart from P-existence itself. For Christians (not the only theists, of course), God is distinct from creation. Creation and God are two (2) different entities.

You missed out on much theology. Panentheists hold that all of the universe is a part of God - God is just something else in addition to this universe. Mormons and other more minority christians presuppose a God as a mind that has eternally pre-existed alongside matter. Even orthodox christians stress in large part God’s immanence throughout the universe. I don’t even have to bring in pantheism to prove my point.

Besides, what you’re saying here amounts to ‘Okay, so it’s an entity, but I’m saying the entity is part of P so it counts’. Well, alright. Then God via panentheism is immanently part of this universe (or wholly part of the universe, if we include God’s beyondness as within our definition of ‘universe’) therefore God = P, and it’s on the same plane as the atheist proposition - just as someone can argue that both a programmer and a simulation can be part of the same wholly-considered universe.

Really, gambits like this are boring.

Unless you suppose that theists do not admit the distinction between “god” and “creation”, in the style of Spinoza or Einstein, the theistic (2) has greater cardinality than the atheistic (1) in terms of entities. An atheistic explanation may be incorrect, but it’s manifestly more minimal in terms of required entities than theism, which gives it a nod in terms of parsimony.

That you’re having to try and wheedle out a technicality to provide a distinction between the proposed entities of atheism and theism says a lot about the atheistic argument. Especially considering the prevalence of multiple-universe theories among atheists nowadays. You may as well just say “Aha, I’m calling both the entity and the universe part of P-universe.” Great; as I said, I can do the same thing. Boring.

It’s neither distinct as an additional entity - which God is – nor is the physical universe “creative” in a telic sense. These are clear additions on top of materialist minimalism, which supposes that the explanation obtains from P-existence itself, internally. It’s “small ball” as explanations go, which is why theists object – it recognizes no necessity for any “Big Kahuna-ness”, or omnimaximal anything.

It’s creative in the sense that it creates the known universe in an event (or has as its explanation backwards-eternity + ‘luckily externally-existing features’). It’s every bit as Big Kahuna as God, but nowhere near as intellectually acceptable.

Really, do you notice that your argument at this point hinges on how you draw the borders with P-existence, while at the same time admitting that even the basic fundamental features of P-existence are widely open to question, even among atheists? You’re hoping that if you just can get ‘mindless evidence-lacking lucky creation/eternity’ as part of P, that it’s the simpler explanation. You won’t be able to, and even if you would, go back to Occam’s razor: “Do not multiply entities beyond what is necessary.” Not “The simpler answer is always to be preferred and assumed.” The atheist explanation requires filling the gaping hole with ‘brute luck’ or ‘eternity, and also luck’. That it’s not necessary to go beyond such an explanation is itself a faith commitment, one very hard to justify when ‘design’ via deism can provide such an explanation satisfactorily.

Are you asking for source code? Compiled software? A description? Do you doubt that a software developer can build in whatever propositional calculus into a created system she wishes?

Compiled software. I’d like to see this for myself. And I don’t care what kind of propositional calculus a developer can build into a sim - 2 + 2 does not become 4. “2 + 2 = 10, in base 4!” is the very example of a cop out answer.

No, that’s precisely what a sim-world enables for us. A sim-world of our own making throws the gates completely open. A ‘virtual calculator’ in a newly devised sim-world can easily affirm that 2+2=4 and 2+2=5. Those are just symbols, and in sim-world, we have complete control over the referents. So we can mess with it as much as we want. As I said, we aren’t even bound to the Law of Identity in our sim-world. A and ~A can simultaneously be true, if we so desire, as ‘true’ is itself an artifact of our design in sim-world.

The only way your objection makes sense is if you demand that our sim-world operating according to the constraints of our P-existence. But that’s precisely the point you’ve been resisting from ateista – that the sim-world (which may be our P-existence from one frame of reference) must be consistent with the design environment that created it.

2+2=4 are not ‘just symbols’. If you’re going to assert that there are universes where 2+2=5 is actual truth, my response is to kindly say that’s absurd, and leave you to your assertions. A world where everyone thinks 2+2=5 is possible. A world where 2+2=5 is actually true is not possible. If you think 2+2=4 is a consequence of the features of P-existence, rather than something which is true in all worlds, sorry - you’ve diverged from me utterly here. And your response of ‘Well, I can make 2+2=5 on all calculators in my sim!’ is, at best, really funny.

But the performance of the explanations is what’s at issue, or should be. Apparently, you are still determined to deny the economical advantage of materialism, and are trying to maintain that materialism has the same entities as theism? If we can agree that materialism requires less entities as explananda, then we may have accomplished something at least, here, and can then look to see if materialism is ‘too simple’ or not.

First, you’re conflating materialism with P-existence - again, this doesn’t follow. P-existence may be materialism, or neutral monism, or anomalous monism, or dual-aspect monism, or idealism, or… and so on, and so forth. No, I don’t agree that when it comes to origins of existence/universe, that materialism requires less entities. Same number of entities, different traits, and the traits of the materialist entity make it every bit as fantastic as the deistic entity but less believable due to a lacked property.

Materialism supposes a unity – a single entity – whereas the theist finds ontological distinctions between the universe and God – making at least two (2) entities part of the explanation where the materialist requires just one(1).

Incorrect for reasons already outlined above.

What is this ‘additional entity’ you say the atheist argues in favor of? My understanding is that the universe is explanatory in itself, that the complexity and differentiation and development we observe are innate, emergent properties of the universe itself. That may be incorrect, but it’s not multiplying entities either way.

One more time: Both the deist/theist and the atheist propose an entity, a creative force at the ultimate origins of existence. For the deist/theist, design is instrumental to that force. To the atheist, design is not permissible as a property for that force - it’s luck/eternity + physical possibility. We are intimately aware of design, being conscious agents. We are aware of what design is capable of practically. We have zero awareness of creative forces lacking a mind - we can imagine them, we can assume them, but by definition we have no awareness of them. No evidence of them can be provided without assumption. This holds no matter how many entities you argue are present in the compared descriptions of the universe, 1 or 2.

You’re attempting to argue that there’s only one fundamental entity in the atheistic conception compared to 2 in the theistic conception by arguing that the creative event is part of P, while the theistic agent is distinct from P. The assertion is based on a flawed understanding of the considerations of God in relation to this universe, and a forced definition of P as materialistic monism. My response is to point out the flawed understanding of the available views of God, and the unwarranted forcing of P’s understanding through a narrow materialism concept.

 

[Touchstone]

There is none. Certainly not on the order we have for design. That you’re having to ask me for it without trying to provide any of your highlights it.

I think this gets cleared up nicely if you could tell me how you establish the non-existence of a thing. Forget about God, as you may be too invested in that commitment to separate the discussion cleanly (I certainly was). Pink unicorns. What would be required to sustain disbelief in the reality of pink unicorns, for you?

I think your answer will narrow down the issue here, and highlight the predicates for our conclusions.

What makes you think you need evidence for a proposition for the proposition to be true? It’s a question of what’s reasonable to believe.

A proposition is true or not true independent of any evidence we may or may not have for it. It’s an objective fact either way. So having evidence doesn’t make a proposition true (or false), but rather provides reasonable justification for supposing that belief. In that regard, then, evidence, direct or indirect, is crucial if we are interested in justified belief. Evidence doesn’t make a proposition true, but it does provide justification for the belief that a proposition is true (or false).

Yep. These questions, no matter which way they are decided, entail some faith. I’ve repeated that throughout this conversation.

Yes, but reading this, it seems you would like to advance the idea that all faith is equally reasonable and choosable. We have no choice, if we want to live, but to make the leap of faith that reality is real. It is faith, but it’s a necessary faith for living. That’s not at all like the kind of faith you are describing in having faith in the reality of God as creator. That’s not compulsory for survival. I and drive to the market or my office quite reliably without such a belief. I cannot do that without a basic faith in the reality of reality, in the actuality of oncoming cars, for example.

Faith comes in different forms and qualities, and these are not all equal with respect to reason and epistemology.

I never suggested this. In fact, I said such evidence was not possible. Are you sure you’re reading my posts?

Well, you keep pointing to the non-existence of God as problematic by virtue of the lack of positive proof of a negative claim. It’s because of your repeated invocation of what you see as an evidence problem that I’m asking… based on the words in your posts.

If there’s no evidential burden for non-belief, then non-belief is reasonable with the proof of a negative. If you are OK with that understanding, I’m good.

Your beliefs aren’t subject to falsification either. Hell, you agreed with as much down where you agreed that, even if God does exist, someone can always offer up a non-God explanation even if it’s an agent.

An omnipotent God – by virtue of being omnipotent – is completely capable of manifesting Himself in such a way that would falsify unbelief. There are any number of scenarios that would make a “non-God explanation” unreasonable. That’s not to say that a zealot could not claim some sort of ‘impersonal conspiracy’ or some such, but that’s the very problem I’m pointing at – the clutching at desired conclusions at the expense of reason. If reason takes counsel of the evidence, then reasonable evidence for the existence of God will be convincing.

At this point I have to ask: Are you suggesting ‘being open to falsification’ is a standard for philosophy? Or that science is capable of providing a falsifiable standard to ultimate origins questions? Have you even thought this through?

Science is philosophy, a stream of philosophy. A couple of centuries ago, “science” was referred to as “natural philosophy”.

Falsification is important to science, but constrained to it. It’s a feature of epistemology, and as such applies to all philosophy. A proposition that is not liable to falsification has a severely diminished epistemic basis for the label “true”. It maybe synthetic knowledge, the product of definitions and tautologies (“all bachelors are unmarried” is trivially true as a matter of definition, for example), but existential knowledge is only gained when it’s at risk of being falsified, at least in principle. Like the idea that that which explains everything explains nothing, that which is not possibly false is similarly not possibly true as a matter of actually, but is reduced to a tautology.

You’re the one who brought up SETI - they’re looking for aliens they’ve never met, based on standards entirely human in origin. But hell, place that aside; Again, I’ve said that the design question at the level of the universe - fundamental design - differs from design questions at levels beneath it. You keep making this weird mix-up between philosophy and science, as if they’re both the same thing with the same standards.

OK. So on one hand you suppose that God exists as designed because “we know design exists” in nature. On the other hand, you are affirming the fundamental difference between design at the metaphysical level (God creating ex nihilo, for example) and the physical level (early hominids chiseling out an arrowhead).

I see that as equivocation on the term ‘design’. You are telling met that Metaphysical Design (MD) exists because Physical Design(PD) exists, and have simply chosen to use the word “design” for both MD, and PD, which by your own admission are different propositions. I’d say it is I who am trying to keep our terms straight here, and keeping MD distinguished from PD. PD doesn’t entail MD, yet you say MD exists because we observe PD. That is getting equivocal notions of design mixed up.

Nope. I’m saying the creative force that atheism presupposes - mindless and/or eternal and lucky ultimate origins - not only has zero evidence, but evidence can never be provided for it due to the nature of the claim.

What ‘force’ is this? You are projecting your telic mindframe on inanimate objects here, I think. Hydrogen isn’t ‘wet’ as hydrogen, and neither is oxygen, but when combined as H2O at the right temperature, “wetness” emerges. Where did the “wetness” come from? Some supernatural force? Luck? It’s just an emergent property of the elements involved. Water simply manifests properties that are innate in the bonding energies and properties of hydrogen and oxygen. No cosmic magic needed, given hydrogen and oxygen as avaialble elements.

It’s a celestial teapot for the atheist. But some design is immediately supported just by virtue of our having subjective experience and designs. I can claim further support in the world, from computers to simulations to forum posts to statues to, etc.

All of those are PD, design matched to designers and agents we can reasonably understand to be extant and capable through observation and testing. That doesn’t support MD at all.

And so does the atheist creative force. It has all the power of God, but lacks a mind.

Maybe you can quote me a source that talks about this ‘atheist creative force’. My understanding is that the forces in view for an atheist are creative as a matter of result, but wholly impersonal and not creative at all as a matter of intent or teleology. I can generate a cool bell shaped graph by recording the rolls of a pair of dice. Are the dice rolling an “atheist creative force”, giving rise to a bell curve reflecting the properties of the phase space the dice represent (each die having six possible outcomes per roll)? That curve emerges as an artifact of the underlying physics. It’s not creative in any sense other than the probabilistic outworking of impersonal physical law. “Creative” is just a concept that useful for telic-minded humans to apply to the phenomenon.

Outside of philosophy, perhaps. You keep wanting to go back to stone arrowheads, but again and again I’ll repeat - we know design exists.

PD != MD. PD does not entail MD.

By your own words, we know design can explain the universe itself with no logical problems. Your counter to design is either brute luck, eternity, and/or a combination of the two. We have vastly less experience with such entities even existing at all, especially when compared to design. Ergo, design’s more reasonable.

If I have a student provide an explanation for his absence from school that involves alien abduction, I would have to grant that explanation would neatly account for his absence. It’s very powerful in accounting for his inability to attend. But that should highlight the vacuous nature of explanatory power detached from realized entities and processes. It’s only through the grounding in the reality of the entities and processes invoked that explanatory power obtains any epistemic power.

As you have it, the ‘aliens abducted me’ is the maximally reasonable.

And you can simply suppose ‘because that’s a law of nature, it’s a brute fact’ as an atheist. Moreover, our observations and knowledge are hardly restrictive. Especially in the context of a simulation from the perspective of the programmer.

These observations do not constrain us to thinking that’s all there is. But by the same measure, they provide a coherent, objective model for reality that other ideas – supernaturalism, for example — cannot provide. It’s not that there can’t be ‘more’, but rather that what’s proposed as ‘more’ is just incoherent and non-performative thus far. There may be more, we just don’t have warrant to conclude there is.

-Touchstone

 

[Touchstone]

nullasalus:

I didn’t address ‘evidence for non-existence’. Nowhere in this thread have I asserted that the atheist most prove that God doesn’t exist. On the contrary, I’ve said that atheists can provide no evidence for the positive claim of mindless fundamental physical luck / eternity as a creative force, especially compared to suggesting design.

That’s the same claim. Not contrary at all. What would you consider evidence for “mindless development” of the universe? We have an ever growing body of observation and knowledge that supports the operation of the universe as automata – proceeding according to law rather than will. But as you said, you can always surmise there is a will underneath any law. If that’s the case, what would you expect to see as “evidence for the positive claim of mindless fundamental physical luck / eternity as a creative force”?

The FSM is nothing more than ‘God’ with a silly picture attached. It is utterly without intellectual utility aside from mockery. That so many people take it seriously says more about the sad state of reason than anything else.

It’s valuable as pedagogy. We can see through the FSM (and the like) who “powerful” invented answers can be, and how illusory that “power” is if demands are not made for the actuality of the agent as means of proceeding. If you don’t have to establish the reality of your agents as part of the explanation, you can “reason” your way to anything you want! Also sprach FSM.

The atheist requires an additional entity as well - no matter how many times you deny this, it’s going to remain the case.

OK, well what is this mysterious entity then. My understanding is that the universe may be an uncaused cause in its own right, and thus a single entity, a unity, a monad. If that’s the case, how do you get two entities out of that? The universe, and what, specifically?

Both the deist/theist and the atheist propose an entity capable of originating and organizing the universe.

Theistic recipe for existence of our reality:

1. One creator deity
2. universe, created by, and distinct from (1).

Atheistic recipe for existence of our reality:

1. universe.

Maybe you can correct the atheist bill of materials in terms of entities for me?

What differs between them is the presence of the one thing we are certain is capable of providing origins and organization - mind. Otherwise, the origin for the atheist either stretches back into eternity, or stretches back to a particular point with no explanation other than ‘brute fact’ and ‘we got luck’. There’s an entity, a creative force and event. The deist/theist’s is vastly more reasonable, and actually has some undeniable evidence.

I have a hard time believing you don’t see the reductio here; what is the origin of God, then? Please don’t tell me it’s a ‘brute fact’, as that simply announces self-indulgence on your part, obvious special pleading.

Because both atheism and deism provide an entity to explain the same thing, but we know that the essential feature of deism (mind) both exists and is capable of originating and organizing. Compare that with atheism, for which we don’t have such evidence, but we can kinda-sorta imagine it.

We do not know mind exists prior to the development and appearance of mind as a physical phenomenon. If you dispute that, than please show me how to verify the existence of mind prior to the evolution of the brain, or whatever you might call the “mind-maker” for some form of sentient life somewhere else in the universe.

If the basic reality of P-existence is affirmed whether we’re Berkeleyan idealists, Russelian neutral monists, Cartesian dualists, Dennett materialists, Kim physicalists, or elsewise - P-existence is already hilarious. Again, if you’re honestly telling me that you can disprove solipsism or even idealism with a bunsen burner, it’s clear you don’t even understand what’s going on with the idea.

Um, do this then. Take a cigarette lighter, and hold your hand right in the flame of it. Now read my post here out loud, and report back how far you got. It’s precisely as hilarious as your ability to read my post aloud with your hand in an open flame.

I’ve not suggested that solipsism can be disproved. It cannot. But I am suggesting it’s wholly irrelevant as a practical matter, which the flame under your fingers while firmly establish for you, should you doubt my claim. Solipsism is necessary to reject as a practical matter, and just isn’t relevant beyond covering logical possibilities. Reality is real, as the smell of burning hair from your fingers will attest.

-Touchstone

 

[Touchstone]

2+2=4 are not ‘just symbols’. If you’re going to assert that there are universes where 2+2=5 is actual truth, my response is to kindly say that’s absurd, and leave you to your assertions. A world where everyone thinks 2+2=5 is possible. A world where 2+2=5 is actually true is not possible. If you think 2+2=4 is a consequence of the features of P-existence, rather than something which is true in all worlds, sorry - you’ve diverged from me utterly here. And your response of ‘Well, I can make 2+2=5 on all calculators in my sim!’ is, at best, really funny.

Do you write software? This is a virtual system, so “actual truth” is undefined until it’s reified as a matter of code in the virtual system. What is the criterion for ‘actual truth’ you’re using inside the sim? When I write simulations, “true” is an artifact of the system itself, perfectly plastic because of the control I have over the structure (or lack of structure) of that system. I think you are projecting real world physics, and the logical constraints that obtain from them, onto our sim, here. There are no such constraints. ‘Actually true’ can be anything we want it to be, as it’s our own virtual universe!

Anyway, let me know what your criterion for ‘actually true’ in all made-up virtual universes is, and we can go from there. For example, ‘true’ in P-existence I associate with ‘corresponding to the actual state of objective reality’. ‘Exists’ would imply ‘extended in space/time’, as well.

What must these mean in our virtual universe? I suspect you are thinking ‘true’ must be somehow cloned from P-existence. If so, that’s the mistake the simulated make going the other way, supposing that layers up the stack are bound by the same constraints as the local frame. No reason to conclude that, up or down the stack.

I’ll get to your other points as time allows, but this stuck out as an important question. What does ‘actually true’ mean when we are building a NON-ACTUAL context, a virtual universe?

-Touchstone

 

[Nullasalus]

I think this gets cleared up nicely if you could tell me how you establish the non-existence of a thing. Forget about God, as you may be too invested in that commitment to separate the discussion cleanly (I certainly was). Pink unicorns. What would be required to sustain disbelief in the reality of pink unicorns, for you?

Considering you’re on record as being capable of deluding yourself for decades and being a practiced liar during the same frame of time, I don’t think you’re in any position to judge my or anyone else’s mental fortuity.

What’s more, you’re trying to change the subject. We’re discussing the comparative reasonableness of believing the atheist’s positive claim about the universe versus the deist/theist’s positive claim about the universe. We’re not discussing proving negatives. If you want that, feel free to fire off a PM to me - otherwise, let’s stick to the subject.

Yes, but reading this, it seems you would like to advance the idea that all faith is equally reasonable and choosable.

Not in the least. I’ve expressly said that the faith required by the atheist is vastly more than is required by the deist. They believe what they do in spite of reason and evidence, against reason and evidence, in comparison.

Well, you keep pointing to the non-existence of God as problematic by virtue of the lack of positive proof of a negative claim. It’s because of your repeated invocation of what you see as an evidence problem that I’m asking… based on the words in your posts.

No, I point to the atheistic positive claim as less reasonable than the deist/theist positive claim, based on a comparison between those claims. You asked me to provide some evidence in favor of the atheistic position; I argued that there is none, while there is evidence in favor of the theistic position.

If there’s no evidential burden for non-belief, then non-belief is reasonable with the proof of a negative. If you are OK with that understanding, I’m good.

One more time: Two completing positive claims. Evidence and experience favors one over the other. The atheistic claim is in the weaker position. Hold it if you like, just recognize the disadvantage. Or don’t. It doesn’t concern me personally, in a way.

An omnipotent God – by virtue of being omnipotent – is completely capable of manifesting Himself in such a way that would falsify unbelief.

Absolutely, positively not. There are limitations to omnipotency, and so long as humans remain as humans, the existence of God will remain unfalsifiable. They can appeal to delusion, to a greater-than-human-but-not-God explanation. You already agreed to this in response to the programmer example, at least when you thought it bolstered the atheist case. Now, you’ve reversed.

Science is philosophy, a stream of philosophy. A couple of centuries ago, “science” was referred to as “natural philosophy”.

That changed. Do you know why? Because science changed, and became something with a different set of standards compared to what goes on with philosophy. Which explains why so many successful scientists are absolutely abysmal when it comes to philosophical understandings.

OK. So on one hand you suppose that God exists as designed because “we know design exists” in nature. On the other hand, you are affirming the fundamental difference between design at the metaphysical level (God creating ex nihilo, for example) and the physical level (early hominids chiseling out an arrowhead).

I see that as equivocation on the term ‘design’. You are telling met that Metaphysical Design (MD) exists because Physical Design(PD) exists, and have simply chosen to use the word “design” for both MD, and PD, which by your own admission are different propositions. I’d say it is I who am trying to keep our terms straight here, and keeping MD distinguished from PD. PD doesn’t entail MD, yet you say MD exists because we observe PD. That is getting equivocal notions of design mixed up.

There is no equivocation here. I said that while PD certainly exists, MD may well not - but the undeniable existence of PD provides reason to believe in MD. You’re having tremendous trouble distinguishing between what I’m claiming is absolute, undeniable truth (I’m making no such claims here) and what is most reasonable to believe given the evidence.

PD and MD do not differ because the design is somehow different - only because MD occupies a particular, ultimate level of existence. It is fundamental, and that fundamental existence is what is beyond falsification. MD can be mistaken for PD, just as some PD can be mistaken for other PD.

What ‘force’ is this? You are projecting your telic mindframe on inanimate objects here, I think. Hydrogen isn’t ‘wet’ as hydrogen, and neither is oxygen, but when combined as H2O at the right temperature, “wetness” emerges. Where did the “wetness” come from? Some supernatural force? Luck? It’s just an emergent property of the elements involved. Water simply manifests properties that are innate in the bonding energies and properties of hydrogen and oxygen. No cosmic magic needed, given hydrogen and oxygen as avaialble elements.

“Cosmic magic” comes in at the source, the origin. You can either plead ‘eternal universe + the eternal properties it had could give rise to our existence and no mind was involved’, which is about as magical as it gets, or ‘It popped into existence out of nothing with all the right properties, and no mind was involved’ which doesn’t fare much better.

As Carl Sagan said, “In order to bake an apple pie, you have to go back to the Big Bang.” Explosion out of nothingness + time = Apple pie, by Sagan’s reasoning. No magic there, totally rational concept that leaves no questions to ask.

All of those are PD, design matched to designers and agents we can reasonably understand to be extant and capable through observation and testing. That doesn’t support MD at all.

It supports MD plenty - it simply does not prove it conclusively, nor can MD be proven or falsified even if it truly does exist. Nor can atheistic creation - it’s just far less believable.

Maybe you can quote me a source that talks about this ‘atheist creative force’. My understanding is that the forces in view for an atheist are creative as a matter of result, but wholly impersonal and not creative at all as a matter of intent or teleology.

Considering I’ve said repeatedly that the atheist ‘creative force’ lacks mind and intention, that should be clear. It’s a creative force in that it’s a force that gave rise to our known universe. Eternal STEM - mind, or non-eternal, popped-out-of-nothingness STEM - mind.

PD != MD. PD does not entail MD.

PD supports MD. The atheist alternative has no such support.

If I have a student provide an explanation for his absence from school that involves alien abduction, I would have to grant that explanation would neatly account for his absence. It’s very powerful in accounting for his inability to attend. But that should highlight the vacuous nature of explanatory power detached from realized entities and processes. It’s only through the grounding in the reality of the entities and processes invoked that explanatory power obtains any epistemic power.

And my response is that deism/theism is the worst explanation for existence, except for all of the alternatives. PD is undeniable. The logical possibility of MD is undeniable. PD provides justification of MD but does not prove it. The alternative is an atheistic creative force, with no comparative evidence in its favor, yet still logically possible. MD’s just more reasonable.

As you have it, the ‘aliens abducted me’ is the maximally reasonable.

Nonsense.

These observations do not constrain us to thinking that’s all there is. But by the same measure, they provide a coherent, objective model for reality that other ideas – supernaturalism, for example — cannot provide. It’s not that there can’t be ‘more’, but rather that what’s proposed as ‘more’ is just incoherent and non-performative thus far. There may be more, we just don’t have warrant to conclude there is.

Supernaturalism is entirely coherent and performative. Go back to your simulation. Meddle with it. From sim-existence’s perspective, meddling by P-existence in sim-existence (Even only in theory) is ‘supernatural’ - it’s a force outside of their existence interfering. If you turn around and say ‘Yes, but P is a subset of sim, therefore it’s all P, and the meddling is natural’, you simply establish that any act on God’s part in our world can be defined as ‘natural’. No problem by my measure.

 

[CatsAndDogs]

I don’t think anything I’ve said needs to attach to the Christian God or any god in particular.

So far as I can see, my words here have been supporting the idea that

• a) the very concept of “supernatural reality” is incoherent, and
• b) the materialist explanation is demonstrably more economical in terms of entities than any theistic one.

On a) :
“Supernatural reality” IS indeed incoherent to those who have no need for the universe to be a “coherent thing”. The problem is that this DOESN’T describe YOU!

The so-called atheist simply “pushes back” the question of creation (origin) into the “fog” of “irrelevant to me”-land, and believes ON FAITH that whatever the REAL answer to the question of creation, the universe IS a coherent whole which is “believable in it’s predictability” as being “where we should be” (aka “the mostly friendly universe” theory").

On b) :
If the so-called atheistic (materialistic) “explanation” (which is actually a non-explanation, as the Question is about CREATION and not present existence) is:

1. “Material order has existed for infinite time as a perpetual motion machine”, then there are NO entites, as “all is deterministic”.
2. “Order just HAPPENED from nothing!”, then there are HUGE numbers of “creational entities” possible (at LEAST one per “universe”) as there is no limit to the possible number of universes.

Being more parsimonious doesn’t make an idea de jure correct. But if we can agree that theism is less parsimonious in terms of entities required, that would be progress, I think.

Required to do WHAT? We’re talking about “creating creation” here. You propose that there are NO (zero) creative entities.

Having NOTHING create creation is NOT more “economical”, because you simply replace a “thing” with a “void”, where a “void” is a special-case of a “thing”!

It’s precisely AS economical to claim that “a thing” created creation as it is to claim that “a thing” created creation.

But the “void” as creator doesn’t do the work required for an answer to the question, which is “how was the creation created”!?

The proposed “void” merely sidesteps the question, without answering it at all.

Quote:
You’re right - the faith an atheist requires in this situation is a more difficult commitment than the faith required by a theist/deist.

I think you must have misunderstood me, then. The faith of an atheist is strictly necessary – compulsory. It can’t be avoided for a human that chooses to live and function in the world. That’s as minimal as you can get in terms of commitment.

Amen!

It’s literally doing the least you can do!

Why is “doing the least you can do” a relevant “economizing behavior” if what one is DOING is NOT DOING anything relevant to the question on the table?

The entire purpose of being a so-called atheist is to find other things to do, anything else to do, to avoid dealing with the “creation” question.

If the question on the table IS the “creation” question, the absolute BEST thing that the so-called atheist should consider DOING in response to being asked his opinion about “creation” is to state that he hasn’t a clue about it and can’t make any statements one way or the other either for or against any “claim” other than that reality does indeed seem to exist.

But, the so-called atheist decides to chime in with a positive statement that, “God qua Christian God” CAN’T exist because…" at which point the so-called atheist states some anti-Christian-God religious doctrine.

Every theist also has this same faith – put your hand over open flame for a few seconds if you doubt this, and it will be viscerally clear what I mean, even as you affirm the reality of an invisible God.

Both the so-called atheist and the Christian God believer believe that reality is reality, and that there is only one reality. It is the cornerstone of BOTH religions (belief systems).

Proving that “reality can burn” is not proof of the nonexistence of God.

But only the Christian (God qua God believer) can tell you WHY “reality can burn” and the actual moral meaning of the fact that “reality can burn”.

To the so-called atheist, the fact that “reality can burn” means only that “one should avoid letting reality burn you”.

To the Christian, the fact that “reality can burn” means that sometimes accepting being burned by reality may be the price for some greater good in the future.