Tony – please feel free to build-on anything I offered also. I don’t want to lose out on any of the good points you were going to raise.Thanks, Reggie. You’ve done my work for me!
I would just add that irrational means either “without the faculty of reason” or " not in accordance with reason" - which are obviously related. Both apply to an accidental universe.
To suggest that it is ordered because it was designed that way is begging the question. ‘God designed an ordered Universe. It looks ordered, therefore God designed it’. I can only reply: ‘If God didn’t design it and it is ordered, then order must be the natural scheme of things (at least in this universe)’. And you can accuse me of the same fallacy.
And we’re back to the Anthropic Principle.
There were no rules at the beginning – at least as we know them. So the conclusion is that order does indeed come from chaos. Unless you want to postulate a designer in which case we reach another impasse.
Yes we are part of the universe. I like to think that the universe has become self-aware through us. And individually we have purpose and meaning, but not in the grand scheme of things. There is no hierarchy of being. We are not the result of a pre-ordained system. We are part of a process that has no direction or purpose. This would follow from an ‘accidental’ origin.
I agree that intelligence could not develop from chaos. But reason and intelligence are not the opposite of accidental chance. They are the result of accidental chance in a non-chaotic universe. Both evolved. And this is undeniable (unless you reject evolution). We have evolved from non-sentient life to sentient life with every fine gradation of that property at every incremental stage. Likewise from unintelligent beings to intelligent.
Between irrational and without reason? I’m not sure there is in this context.
We don’t see any empirical evidence of that though. That’s why we hear about multiverse speculations. Highly specified order does not arise from chaos – and certainly, intelligence does not emerge from chaos. However, we do have empirical evidence that order arises from intelligence – and intelligence (AI) also is the product of intelligence. So, it’s reasonable to conclude that the order we observe in the universe is also the product of intelligence.
As above, it’s not an impasse but a reasonable solution. Chaos is not a reasonable cause of the order we observe – but intelligence is. This is based on what we know about chaos and intelligence.
But these points that you’re asserting don’t solve the question on how purpose arose from chaos. We do recognize order and hierarchy – things are better or worse, things fulfill functions or they don’t. But this is not what would be expected from an accidental-chance-chaotic origin.
I don’t think it’s an impasse but a reasonable conclusion.
I think that’s a very speculative conclusion – so I couldn’t agree that it is undeniable. We don’t have evidence that mutations and natural selection can create intelligence - and more importantly, we have no evidence at all that life can emerge from non-life.
That’s the classic Darwinian story but it has far too many problems to truly be an explanation of how intelligence arose by chance from accidental causes. I don’t think the evidence is there to support the claim.
There’s enough mathematical arguments out there to substantiate a chaotic start:
See above.
Agreed.
I think that you’re trying to slide a fast one through here. You’ve said above that intelligence does not arise from chaos (and I agree). So if you have intelligence then you must have order to start with. It can’t work the other way around. If you want to say that further order can be imposed by intelligence, then I have no problem with that at all.
You’re presupposing God here. He is the intelligence, therefore order. But as was shown above, the universe was chaotic at the start and is now orderly. It is a reasonable solution to suggest that order will eventuate from chaos as a natural process.
I’m not suggesting that purpose arose from chaos. I’m saying there is no purpose, period. Order and hierarchy (to a certain extent) do not imply purpose. Better or worse is a comparative term, not an absolute one. Obviously we can use the terms in a personal manner and they have a different meaning for us (it’s better if children didn’t develop cancer) but there’s no ‘better or worse’ as far as the universe is concerned. It could care less.
I might agree if I believed there was purpose.
I think that it’s a given. There’s enough evidence to show our lineage through the ages and there’s no doubt that we are more intelligent. It has developed as a result of evolution. Even going back one step to the apes and we can see that. It is evolutionary beneficial. As is sentience (although I did read some sci-fi a couple of weeks back that suggested that alien life could be intelligent yet not sentient. Difficult to get my head around that…).
You don’t agree that being smarter than the next guy is an advantage when it comes to avoiding being eaten or success in hunting?
Since the universe is the only one we have (or at least the only one we have access to), any qualification of the universe in iterms of its predictability, rationality, etc., must be suspended, since such descriptions can be applied only relatively. That is, if we say “this is ordered”, such a description is only meaningful in comparison to something which is less ordered, or unordered. In respect to the universe as a whole, such a comparison is impossible.
Tonyey and followers:
I have no followers. I am a follower of the greatest moral teacher known to the world who showed us how to live and die for others, rather than follow the law of the jungle - with a gun… (Nevertheless I’m glad to see you back in circulation - provided you’re not trigger-happy.
)I am not a monarchist nor is there a camp! (I sympathise with your enjoyment of linguistic pyrotechnics - to which I’m not immune - but this farrago of metaphors does nothing to further the discussion.
Others and I have often made the point that reason has to be supplemented by Revelation to establish the full truth of Christianity.
Human ideas of economy - which demand instant coffee and photos - are irrelevant to the nature of reality. Why are you in such a hurry to get development over with? Would you prefer your life to be curtailed to a picosecond? Personally I prefer to have all eternity at my disposal… but then there’s no accounting for taste. The mania for speed must be infectious…
You obviously don’t like music.
My concept of heaven includes divine melodies, rhythms and harmonies of which Mozart, Beethoven and others given us a foretaste.Of course it does.
You are neglecting the principle of economy. Occam’s Razor eliminates all superfluous engineers in favour of the Supreme Artist. A technocratic interpretation of reality slices away the creative genius of poets, painters, sculptors, architects, dramatists, novelists, composers and - of course - philosophers (to which noble vocation we both aspire!).
Yes, that study does show that chaos was present and is not just a perception in observers – but there are a few more things that are needed to arrive at your conclusion.
I’m not trying to slide a fast one through – I’m just trying to trace back the effects (what we observe) to causes based on what we know in the real world.
First – I didn’t presuppose God but merely that we observe what intelligence can do – and only intelligence can create highly-specified order and can create other intelligences. We see no evidence that chaos can do that.
Actually, I agree – the universe could care less. Therefore, the universe cannot produce purpose, meaning, value or hierarchies. But those things exist. They exist within the universe. So, we have to explain where they came from. They couldn’t come from the universe. Again, we know that purpose and meaning are products of design.
We do observe purpose to a very high degree in human life. We see it in animal life also. Even if you reduced all human life to “the struggle to survive” – that is a purpose which is unexplained by chaos. But human life is loaded with a complex network of mutual purposes and searches for meaning that go far beyond survival alone. Our discussion today is a good example. Where did this search for meaning and purpose come from? It can’t emerge from accidental-chance since there is no need or source for any purpose in that kind of chaos.
That’s the way the theory explains it, but it’s not a plausible explanation. The only “benefit” that evolution responds to is reproductive success – or survival of the species.
That’s the strange thing about it. If being smarter was an advantage, then everything would be getting smarter in its competition for food. But there is an enormous variety of species that are living well on earth that have very limited intelligence. We could start from the simplest bacteria. Their food source is abundant. There is no shortage that requires them to compete with others for survival – and therefore, no need for any evolutionary adaptation at all.
On the contrary, if it said nothing about the Creator, then we couldn’t conclude that the universe was created.
I read that book some years ago and found it to be good. The Case for a Creator has only gotten much better in the past decade since scientific evidence is even stronger now.
I agree – that’s a big flaw in the book. If I remember correctly, Mr. Stroebel offered some Protestant-evangelistic preaching at the end of the book which did not follow at all from the evidence that he provided to that point.
Exactly. But you haven’t yet offered a point that is relevant to what “Tony and his camp followers” have said at all. We’re in a philosophical discussion and we haven’t been discussing Catholic or Protestant theology at all.
Interesting point on theology – again, having nothing to do directly with Tony and his camp followers support of the argument from design.
Again, you speak in absolutes which only offer contradictory ideas. If the engineers “had no idea”, then what did they start with? Apparently, they didn’t know how to create the laws of nature which would act on matter and energy. They had “no idea” at all? So, they took what was lying around in the garage and experimented. Somehow, they happened to create self-replicating cells with a near-infinite arrangement of complex specified parts and cross-dependent functionality. These then, by accident, just happened to produce the entire biosphere of 30-50 million species of plants and animals on earth.
In my opinion the consequence is rational. That doesn’t mean the origin is rational as we understand the term to define.My thinking is creation is in keeping with what created it, much more introduces the process of Divine existence which is impossible to contain in a box, out of our relative and able association with our thought process in time…We are vastly limited… For example, what exactly would a God require to reason out, and for what purpose exactly? What is it accomplishing if accomplishment is outside of “things”. These ideas of construction like a factory plant or a person builds a house make no sense to myself …I don’t see the connection when I look around, sky, universe whatever. I’d say thats a much different application and tool box…nothing really imaginable … time, space, all of it is another ball game…in another park…including any specific properties of reason.
All the terms we use to describe God are analogous but “rational” implies that God knows what He is doing when He creates the universe - unlike Spinoza’s God who is equated with Nature.
Begging the question is assuming the premise is correct from nothing other than the premise itself. ‘The Universe looks designed, therefore it was designed’.
What, like a snowflake. Or a Fibonacci sequence. Or an eye. Or a crystal.
I’m not saying that the universe is not designed. I’m saying it looks entirely natural to me. I’m saying that it doesn’t have the appearance of being designed. I’m saying that there is no evidence available to me to suggest that it was designed.
So there’s nothing natural at all in your view. What does the word actually mean to you?Also seasons, water, land, air, animals, people, the things people design … etc.
It’s a human construct that fine-tuning exists. Because what you are saying in effect that is fine tuning exists for our benefit. I read a quote by Feynman just last night where he tongue-in-cheek expressed amazement that he saw a car registration (insert random sequence of letters and numbers here) on his way to this office. Good grief, there was only one car in the whole country that had that registration and he saw it! I’m sure you follow his point.
OK, but at least you agree that it’s a reasonable assumption.
But it’s not more reasonable to me. You seem to want to add a further complexity – a designer, to something that we have both suggested could be a reasonable explanation in itself.
Purpose exist within the universe – it exists as a human construct. But the universe itself indicates no purpose. We impose purpose and meaning to give purpose and meaning to life, because to accept that it has neither is too difficult for most people to accept.
I have to be careful not to break the rules here, so I’ll be brief. Yes, survival (to a point where you produce offspring) is the only benchmark. And if someone is a little smarter and lives longer to do that, then the species will get smarter. It’s not the only way of surviving. Sharks aren’t known for their high IQ, but they don’t need to be any smarter than they are now. We obviously did need that feature.
All knowledge is a human construct!
Fine tuning exists for the benefit of **all **life in the universe! Do you deny that life is objectively valuable?
We follow the point that individual numbers are allocated for no particular reason but they **all **serve a purpose!
There is a vast difference between a very simple state which by itself serves no purpose and an immensely complex universe which serves as an **essential **environment for living organisms and rational beings.
If! The onus is on you to demonstrate how purpose arises from that which is purposeless.
Not without a jot of evidence…
Those who suggest that it is a reasonable explanation need to recreate the process by which living, autonomous, sentient entities with hindsight, insight and foresight are derived from inanimate particles.
All knowledge is a human construct!
Even David Hume admitted there is evidence of purpose everywhere.
With far more cogency it can be said it is too difficult for some people to accept the reality of objective purpose and meaning in life because it entails the existence of Design together with moral obligations …
An assumption based on a preconceived conclusion. The only valid benchmark is the power of reason without which benchmarks wouldn’t be conceived and established.
It is assumed that smartness exists and that smartness can develop.
Then there is no reason why smartness exists! It is yet another unexplained and **unnecessary **luxury like the existence of colours, perfumes, tastes, harmonies and tactile sensations - and the richness and beauty of life itself.
A remarkably solipsistic claim from someone who is not, by your admission, a solipsist. Certainly our particular human perception of the world is something we have to accept as being just the way we encounter reality, whatever that reality may be in and of itself. We can’t perceive the world from a nonhuman perspective - even our interpretation of what other animals might sense is filtered through our human awareness. But I would venture to suggest that the supposition of non-design is further removed from the perceptive bubble of humanity than the supposition of intelligent design, and is thus, as an epistemological tool, much better at drawing us out of ourselves.
The supposition of non-design does not form a **rational **basis for anything. We do not usually rely on accidents to reach our conclusions.
The claim that the natural world created itself is a human construct, an artifact of the propensity for telling stories which make us alone responsible for deciding what is good or evil, right or wrong, just or unjust. It is far more convenient to have no obligations to anyone but ourselves and to make man the measure of all things. Then we can have everything our own way and mould reality to conform to our own physical desires, a highly desirable state of affairs to which the existence of a higher power is an insurmountable obstacle.
The order, richness and beauty of the natural world is overwhelming evidence that it is not due to a series of fortuitous events that have occurred for no purpose whatsoever. No person in his or her right mind lives **as if **we are valueless sparks in the dark which imagine all our knowledge and freedom to choose what to believe and how to live are derived from the dust beneath our feet. That is a sceptic’s self-destructive fantasy which doesn’t correspond in the slightest to daily reality.
Not on accidents alone, but on predictable cause-and-effect relationships. Once you introduce the possibility of intelligent intervention, otherwise known as ‘miracles’, all bets are off.
If the ideas of a self-initiating universe and of undirected natural evolution are human constructs, it’s funny that they took until the Enlightenment to manifest. Prior to the advent of modern science and the exercise of dispassionate reason, the predominant human propensity was to imbue the rest of nature with humanlike characteristics, with intention that was somehow focussed primarily on human life and human fate. And you are still mistaking the absence of obligation to imaginary supernatural entities with the absence of obligation to anything, even other real living beings.
And is the chaos, desolation, violence and ugliness of other parts of the natural universe also evidence of your intelligent designer?
But it’s quite possible, even desriable, to live as if we only matter to ourselves - transecendent importance is not required to live a fulfilling human life.