Intelligent Design is Self-refuting

[HarryStotle]

Gravity explicitly denies God and any other god. That’s what’s been going on in science for years.

Gravity doesn’t explicitly deny God until gravity can explicitly explain itself and the origin of the constants of physics that it relies upon.

Where does Gravity allow for God to push the planets round in their orbits I ask you?

That would be something of a straw God you are “debunking,” there, no?

 

[LateCatholic]

That was an awful mess of assertions. Care to make at least one argument for one of them?

1. It doesn’t have to be intelligent
   This one is obvious. The force needed to cause the universe could be simply that, a “force”. A fluctuation. An overflow. A vacuum potential. There is nothing in the argument that states that the uncaused cause is intelligent. Consider this question: If the cause MUST be “intelligent”, could a ‘cause’ that was a little dumber have also initiated the universe? Or a little smarter? So if you can’t prove the cause is intelligent, the leap to “and that uncaused cause is God” is invalid.

1. There can be more than one
   Again, obvious. There can (and probably is) more than one universe. So according to the argument, there is more than one cause.

1. It does not have to exist now
   Again, obvious. By definition, a cause is fleeting, temporary. So it clearly does not have to exist today. Some will say, “but God is outside of time”. That also invalidates the argument. Causation requires time. You can’t make up you own rules here.

1. It could be random
   Similar to #1, does not have to be intelligent.

1. It does not have to be omnipotent
   The universe is finite. Ergo, the cause is finite.

1. It does not have to be omniscient
   Again, obvious. The point of these last two is that the argument does not prove “God”. Even if accepted, what makes you think the cause actually wanted this to happen?

suffers from special pleading.

This is inherent in the argument. Saying everything has a cause except God is special pleading and is a logical fallacy. Also the Fallacy of Composition.

Medium

Any creator needs a medium. For example, an artist needs paint. A sculptor needs clay. What was the universe made out of? The ‘uncaused cause’ needed something to invoke change upon. Since God is defined as all there is, the universe must have been created from part of God (and God is thus no longer ‘all there is’, and can change).

 

[LateCatholic]

That was an awful mess of assertions. Care to make at least one argument for one of them? Or are you content with proof by assertion, appeal to ridicule, or just plain bandwagon logic?

See my other post. However. I just want to clarify my point. Regardless of your feeling of any of the variations of the Cosmological arguments, they are DEIST arguments. They are NOT THEIST arguments. In other words, even if you think the argument is valid, it in no way proves or even helps prove the theist point of view. Saying that the universe has a cause doesn’t do anything to prove what we typically define as God. It’s like me claiming that as child I built a plastic model of an airplane, therefore I can design a space shuttle. How do you make that leap? That’s the real problem with these arguments. Even if you accept them as true, you haven’t gotten anywhere.

 

[LateCatholic]

Let us anticipate the “god of the gaps” objection here, and point out that, until the question of a completely sufficient explanation is resolved, the “god of the gaps” is, itself, susceptible to a science of the gaps retort. So that gets us, precisely, no where.

Neither the diversity of life nor any other theory completely explain anything until a completely sufficient explanation for everything is achieved.

Sure, but what do you mean “God of the Gaps” objection? You’ve literally just defined it. It’s not an objection. It’s a theists rationale.
It’s very simple. You say “Explain A,B, and C”. I can’t. Therefore, there MUST be a supernatural cause, like Apollo pulling the sun across the sky with his chariot.
But then I explain A and B. You say, OK, but you’re not finished, so you change your definition (no Sun God but a God who is an uncaused cause). “God of the Gaps” is NOT an atheist argument or objection. It is what your thing. When you say you believe in God because there are unanswered scientific questions, YOU are using the “God of the Gaps” argument, not me.

Neither the diversity of life nor any other theory completely explain anything until a completely sufficient explanation for everything is achieved.

I’d just like to point out this sentence is logically false:

If NOT(Every X), therefore NOT(Some X).

I don’t know why you think that we can’t explain anything until we explain everything. That’s simply not a reasonable statement, and I don’t see why you think that advances your position anyway.

 

[Bradskii]

All I’m seeing here is some fearful people who think that some Christian will do an ‘end run’ and get God - any god - into the classroom. That’'s not me.

Let’s not beat about the bush. You deny evolution because it doesn’t align with your fundamentalist views (any news on the age of the planet yet?).

And you keep complaining that people here are using evolution to deny God. Yet you cannot come up with ONE SINGLE QUOTE from this forum to back that up.

And you cannot have been paying attention as ID is SPECIFICALLY used to promote creationism in the educational system.

 

[rossum]

Gravity doesn’t explicitly deny God until gravity can explicitly explain itself and the origin the constants of physics that it relies upon.

Nor does evolution explicitly deny God. Like all science textbooks (except possibly in Iran or Saudi Arabia) no deities are mentioned. Material causes are given for material effects.

 

[rossum]

Actually I am wondering that how one can prove that uncaused cause has to be intelligent.

If it exists, it does not have to be intelligent. However, even if it exists and is not intelligent, then very obviously it cannot participate in Intelligent Design.

An unintelligent cause refutes Intelligent Design.

 

[Bradskii]

STT:

Actually I am wondering that how one can prove that uncaused cause has to be intelligent.

If it exists, it does not have to be intelligent. However, even if it exists and is not intelligent, then very obviously it cannot participate in Intelligent Design.

An unintelligent cause refutes Intelligent Design.

Who says it even has to be sentient?

 

[HarryStotle]

This is inherent in the argument. Saying everything has a cause except God is special pleading and is a logical fallacy. Also the Fallacy of Composition.

Let’s begin here, shall we?

Your entire litany of responses are classic straw arguments that misrepresent the various versions of the cosmological argument with your own hobbled version.

This “special pleading” objection has been dealt with many times, yet you rescucitate it as if it is some brilliant retort. It isn’t.

The argument has never been presented by classic theists as “everything has a cause except God.” The simplest version is "everything that comes into existence must have a cause because contingent things just don’t bootstrap themselves into existence. In order to arrive at any kind of explanatory sufficiency requires the existence of a cause that explains its own existence as well as the existence of everything else. Contingent things, things that cannot explain their own existence but are contingent upon the existence of something else, cannot be explanatorily sufficient.

That isn’t special pleading at all. In fact, it would be you doing your own brand of special pleading by claiming everything (every particular thing in the universe) needs a cause but everything (the universe as a whole) does not. Especially since the universe is not anything except the agglomeration of particular entities.

As to the composition fallacy objection, the composition fallacy only holds regarding the way certain things are composed. If every brick in a wall is red, the wall will necessarily be red, by composition.

If every materially existent and contingent thing in the universe needs an explanation for its existence, you cannot just magically assert “But the entire universe doesn’t.” That would be – at least on the surface – the same as making the claim that every brick in the wall is red, but that doesn’t prove the wall is red. It certainly appears that it does. You wouldn’t argue the composition fallacy shows the wall doesn’t have to be red just because every brick in it is red. Would you?

You have to make the case that the contingency of particular things in the universe is not like the redness of bricks in a wall. You haven’t done that, have you?

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Gravity doesn’t explicitly deny God until gravity can explicitly explain itself and the origin the constants of physics that it relies upon.

Nor does evolution explicitly deny God. Like all science textbooks (except possibly in Iran or Saudi Arabia) no deities are mentioned. Material causes are given for material effects.

Are we to read this reply as you backing away from your previous claim…

Gravity explicitly denies God…

…to a more moderate:

“Science doesn’t explicitly deal with God.”

We can accept that.

 

[rossum]

Are we to read this reply as you backing away from your previous claim…

That was not my claim, it was me quoting your claim about evolution, transposed into a different key, to point up the incorrectness of your initial claim about evolution explicitly denying God.

Compare the text of your post I was replying to with the text of my reply.

 

[LateCatholic]

The Church can combine scientific information with Divine Revelation.

Can you define “Divine Revelation”? I would like to hear your definition before responding.
Specifically:

Who “gets” it? What are their qualifications? Why do you trust them? Why is Christian divine revelation better than any other divine revelation? Or why do only (some) Christians get it? How do you know they are not lying in order to get you to do something for them, like give them money, come to Church on Sundays, or (in older times) kill someone else or sacrifice your life for those that received said revelations?

This “special pleading” objection has been dealt with many times, yet you rescucitate it as if it is some brilliant retort.

It’s not brilliant. It’s the definition. You state everything that comes into existence has a cause. God is the only thing that never came into existence. It is not worth even arguing. It is a FALLACY. Why do you get to claim that? I can easily claim that the universe never came into existence, and that it has no cause. Why do you get to take one more step backwards? For example, I can replace “God” in your argument with “vacuum potential” and nothing changes. I can say “math and logic” never ‘came into existence’, and the universe is an inevitable result of mathematical probability. That’s where the “special” comes in. If you can claim a special rule, so can I, and the argument falls apart.

Your comment about composition makes no sense as well. Again, these are definitional fallacies. This isn’t something you can argue. From a philosophy standpoint, your argument contains these fallacies. It’s not deniable. This means that your argument is inherently weaker, if not completely false, because there are many known and acceptable objections. It has nothing to do with your position. It is about how you made your case.

I’m not sure you understand what a fallacy is. A fallacy is like a plot hole in a movie. We all can agree it is there and it causes a problem. You can try to explain it away. But you cannot ignore the weakness. And the reason these are called fallacies and not ‘plot holes’ is because over the years, philosophers have realized that arguments with these fallacies simply do not hold up. Consider my response to “Only God came into existence”. When I say “Well, I believe only the vacuum potential came into existence”, you have no response. Please give me one if you do. A common response from apologists is “thats silly”. But I guess having God always exist is not silly.

Really - this argument is not taken seriously any more. I’ve taken many philosophy classes and this is something you are taught early on how NOT to make an argument.

 

[buffalo]

No one on philosophy takes the argument seriously.

Really? Source?

 

[HarryStotle]

I can easily claim that the universe never came into existence, and that it has no cause.

Well you can CLAIM the universe came into existence without a cause, but modern Big Bang cosmology points at a determinable beginning point for space-time, matter and energy. That implies you cannot use space-time, matter and energy to explain the origin of space-time, matter and energy. Let’s not bring up Lawrence Krauss because his claim basically amounts to an assertion that the quantum vacuum just exists as a matter of necessity. He provides no basis upon which to make that claim.

The difference is that science cannot pursue a cause beyond space-time, matter and energy because, methodologically speaking, science is restricted to space-time, matter and energy by its very methodology.

So the question moves to logical and metaphysical analysis, which doesn’t rely on pure assertion, but on the principle of sufficient reason. What is sufficient to explain the existence of an intelligible and mathematically complex physical universe when that universe came into existence 14.7 billion years ago? How do we explain it when it logically cannot explain its own existence?

We have no reason to think the quantum vacuum just exists as a brute fact. Nor can a pure brute fact be explanatorily sufficient. That is tantamount to throwing your hands in the air and asserting baldly that it just is without need of explanation. Hardly sufficient as far as an explanation is concerned.

Metaphysically speaking, those who are not materialistic dogmatists begin with the idea that a sufficient explanation does and must exist, otherwise you have to accept that all that exists is purely inexplicable. That, unfortunately, means that drawing the line of inexplicability is entirely a random act based purely on caprice rather than any substantive criteria. Nope, if we are going to assume reality is explicable, we need to pursue that to its logical end, not merely where atheistic materialists conveniently decide based on their own metaphysical presumptions.

What would explanatory sufficiency look like? It exists necessarily and is not contingent. It explains itself along with everything else. It has the capacity to bring all particular and contingent things, including consciousness and formal intelligibility, into existence and maintain them in existence.

Krauss claims a quantum vacuum is the candidate, and further claims he establishes that something can and does come from nothing. Ergo, NOTHING is his candidate for being the necessary and sufficient explanation for everything. Uh huh.

Let’s be real simple here. Which is a better candidate to explain the existence of the complex and superbly precisely ordered universe we happen to live in? Nothing or Aquinas’ Pure Act of Being Itself? You can plead the former – even by pleading your own special kind of nothing – if you think that is reasonable.

You might want to ask yourself, seriously, what cognitive biases you have for preferring a non-explanation as an explanation when an infinitely more Intelligent One is there to be had.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Are we to read this reply as you backing away from your previous claim…

That was not my claim, it was me quoting your claim about evolution, transposed into a different key, to point up the incorrectness of your initial claim about evolution explicitly denying God.

Compare the text of your post I was replying to with the text of my reply.

Except that you could not have been replying to me because I never posted in this thread prior to you claiming…

Gravity explicitly denies God and any other god.

Feel free to go back and read your post and those prior to it.

 

[HarryStotle]

Really - this argument is not taken seriously any more. I’ve taken many philosophy classes and this is something you are taught early on how NOT to make an argument.

Of course, your straw man version of the cosmological argument was never taken seriously to begin with. If your “many philosophy classes” permit you to get away with straw manning theistic arguments or any others, your tuition is being wasted.

I noticed that you didn’t actually reply to my post relative to the composition fallacy.

Intelligent Design is Self-refuting Philosophy

Let’s begin here, shall we? Your entire litany of responses are classic straw arguments that misrepresent the various versions of the cosmological argument with your own hobbled version. This “special pleading” objection has been dealt with many times, yet you rescucitate it as if it is some brilliant retort. It isn’t. The argument has never been presented by classic theists as “everything has a cause except God.” The simplest version is "everything that comes into existence must have a caus…

Nor did you actually address the rebuttal to your special pleading argument, because your composition fallacy reply was intended to buttress it and failed.

You cannot just assert that a wall made entirely of red bricks might be some other colour because muh “composition fallacy.” And neither can you further go on to claim that a universe made up entirely of contingent entities might not itself be contingent because muh “composition fallacy.”

Ergo, you can’t invoke “special pleading” until you have shown that there is something about the universe that actually isn’t contingent.

To be clear, it isn’t “a composition fallacy” to say that a wall is necessarily red if every brick in the wall is red. Nor is it “special pleading” to claim that the brick layer who constructed the wall need not be red just because every brick used to make the wall happens to be red.

 

[rossum]

Except that you could not have been replying to me because I never posted in this thread prior to you claiming…

My apologies, I should have checked more carefully. It was not your post I was quoting, but edwest211:

Evolution explicitly denies God and any other god.

 

[Bradskii]

LateCatholic:

I can easily claim that the universe never came into existence, and that it has no cause.

Well you can CLAIM the universe came into existence without a cause, but modern Big Bang cosmology points at a determinable beginning point for space-time, matter and energy. That implies you cannot use space-time, matter and energy to explain the origin of space-time, matter and energy.

What was on the other side of the big bang? Any ideas?

 

[rossum]

Well you can CLAIM the universe came into existence without a cause,

That depends on what definition of “universe” you are using. Since this discussion includes God, then obviously the STEM universe is insufficient. For a wider definition I prefer a paraphrase of Wittgenstein: The universe is All That Exists. (ATE).

That universe includes the STEM universe plus anything else that exists: the multiverse (possibly), angels, djinn, gods, goddesses, the Dharmakaya and the Abrahamic God. Everything that exists.

The ATE universe obviously does not have a cause, since any existing cause must already be included in the ATE universe. Hence it has no cause - anything external to it does not exist. If any of its constituent elements are eternal, then the ATE universe is also eternal.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Well you can CLAIM the universe came into existence without a cause,

That depends on what definition of “universe” you are using. Since this discussion includes God, then obviously the STEM universe is insufficient. For a wider definition I prefer a paraphrase of Wittgenstein: The universe is All That Exists. (ATE).

That universe includes the STEM universe plus anything else that exists: the multiverse (possibly), angels, djinn, gods, goddesses, the Dharmakaya and the Abrahamic God. Everything that exists.

The ATE universe obviously does not have a cause, since any existing cause must already be included in the ATE universe. Hence it has no cause - anything external to it does not exist. If any of its constituent elements are eternal, then the ATE universe is also eternal.

Seems just a tad like sleight of hand. Define ATE, punt to “no cause” then declare it all eternal without distinction.

The part to be disputed is that according to classical theism God isn’t some part or aspect of “all that exists” but the GROUND of existence itself. Nothing else need be eternal.

That means God, properly understood, is not a “constituent element” at all but the eternal ground for the possibility of existence. That, essentially, takes the cogency out of your … “If any of its constituent elements are eternal, then the ATE universe is also eternal…” point.