Why are we (usually) reasonable?!

[Sair]

Only if you reject **on principle **all the evidence presented on this forum and elsewhere - as if you have privileged insight into the nature of reality…

If the evidence were coercive no one would be free to choose what to believe and how to live.

The evidence for gravity is coercive - if you jump from a sufficient height without a parachute or a net, you’ll fall to your death. We’re free to deny this, to an extent, but not without consequence. Why must any evidence of a god be different? I’ll go to the end of my days without belief in a personal god - by the time I reap the consequences, apparently - supposing there even are any - it will be too late to change my perspective…

 

[Sair]

Only if you reject **on principle **all the evidence presented on this forum and elsewhere - as if you have privileged insight into the nature of reality…

Why do theistic believers denigrate atheists on the grounds that we must have ‘privileged insight into the nature of reality’?

Do you not perceive the irony here? Every assertion made about the true character of God and the rationality of the universe is a claim to privileged insight into the nature of reality. To state that you know there is a rational, personal, designing deity who made the universe according to a specific plan is to claim that you know how the universe works, and will brook no argument. Assert away, by all means, but don’t pretend to be surprised when I and others call you out on your unwarranted assumptions…

 

[Sair]

Sair
**
The former - that is, the notion that we are ‘designed’ to be reasonable, is only probable if you have unequivocal evidence for a designer. **

Why does there have to be unequivocal evidence for a designer, but no evidence at all that we are not designed?

Because there is no evidence that we are designed unless there is evidence of a designer. A few centuries ago, the idea that we and every other animal were products of design was convincing, because we had no other plausible explanation for the diversity and intricacy of life. Since Darwin, we have a beautiful and elegant explanation for how life diversified and how relationships between living things developed. You can’t simply point to such things and say, “Here is evidence that life was designed for a specific purpose.” The only evidence of design that would be convincing is genuine evidence of the presence and action of a designer - not evidence of the effects of ‘design’, since the effects are explicable without the design hypothesis.

And what would you count as evidence that we are not designed? You only need evidence that we are not designed if you assume already, without evidence, that we are designed. Having said that, of course, I can certainly point to particular facts that would call into question the intelligence and competence of any designer who made us, and other living entities…

 

[Sair]

There is no evidence so far that there will be a reasonable answer - only one that is imagined to be produced by certain animals…

Here’s where, as I’ve said before, I question the notion of ‘rationality’ that you claim to hold. It’s a notion that comes from beyond established material reality, as if rationality is only something that can exist in and of itself, rather than something that can arise as a cumulative effect of other entities. You’ve insisted in previous posts that rationality cannot be a product of elements that are not, by themselves, rational. Why not? Why must rationality be a phenomenon entire unto itself? The answer to this question has never been offered; but the assumption that rational comprehension, such as humans have been known to exercise, cannot arise from simpler, unthinking, unconscious parts, has been confidently asserted. On what grounds, exactly?

 

[Sair]

God appears to have worked into the fabric of human reason the fact that for things to be accepted as true, they must be reasonable.

Why does this have to be the work of any god? If it were, one might expect that the idea of divine intervention would seem rather more rational than ridiculous…

 

[tonyrey]

It would be very interesting to know the statistics for the number of unanswered posts for and against the primacy of reason. It would give some indication of the relative strength of the two views. If statements are regularly

unrefuted and questions regularly unanswered it is reasonable to believe they cannot be refuted or answered satisfactorily by the defaulters. Until they do so they are undermining their position rather than consolidating it - and the more dogmatic they have been the less convincing they become!
An appeal to “evolution” or “compatibilism” is an inadequate response because such terms tell us next to nothing. Without an outline of what they imply they are worthless. In this case it is not the devil who is in the details! *I would hazard a guess that not everyone has every day to devote to debates on CAF! That being the case, it’s easy to miss posts from a page or two back - so the accusation of deliberate avoidance is not necessarily warranted.

The accusation of “deliberate avoidance” exists only in your imagination!

Be that as it may, it’s also the case - at least, in my experience - that the determination of those who argue for ‘Intelligent Design’ is such that they will forward such bizarre and esoteric arguments that they cannot be answered immediately by any genuinely rational, matter-of-fact response. One must first wade through a vast cess pit of vague metaphysical assertions before even finding any concrete statement that is even open to refutation.

Please cite specific examples of “bizarre and esoteric arguments” and “a vast cess pit of vague metaphysical assertions” in my posts.

It’s very simple and straightforward, on its face, to state (as the likes of Dinesh D’Souza regularly do) that the universe must have some front-loading of rationality by an intelligent designer in order to be intelligible to beings that have the capacity for reason; it takes rather more effort of explanation to elucidate why this is not necessarily the case.

Ditto - with substitution of “no front-loading of rationality”.

My own intimations in this regard - to wit, that humans who exercise rationality evolved within the very universe we endeavour to explain - have thus far gone unanswered, except by being swept under the rug with blanket assertions that rationality must have been injected from the very beginning.

Cite one specific example in any of my posts.

What is one to say to this? It’s hardly my problem if those to whom I direct my arguments refuse to even consider them.

Which specific arguments have I failed to consider in my posts?

 

[tonyrey]

*Only if you reject **on principle ***

The existence of gravity has nothing whatsoever to do with your power to choose what to believe about the existence of God.

I’ll go to the end of my days without belief in a personal god - by the time I reap the consequences, apparently - supposing there even are any - it will be too late to change my perspective…

A statement which merely and clearly demonstrates you are not open-minded to such an extent that you are fully determined to reject any other view of reality but your own…

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Sair
**
Since Darwin, we have a beautiful and elegant explanation for how life diversified and how relationships between living things developed. You can’t simply point to such things and say, “Here is evidence that life was designed for a specific purpose.”**

This according to Darwin himself:

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).

 

[tonyrey]

Why do theistic believers denigrate atheists on the grounds that we must have ‘privileged insight into the nature of reality’?

They don’t - except in the case of those who make such statements as “I’ll go to the end of my days without belief in a personal god”…

Do you not perceive the irony here? Every assertion made about the true character of God and the rationality of the universe is a claim to privileged insight into the nature of reality. To state that you know there is a rational, personal, designing deity who made the universe according to a specific plan is to claim that you know how the universe works, and will brook no argument. Assert away, by all means, but don’t pretend to be surprised when I and others call you out on your unwarranted assumptions…

Cite one specific example in any of my posts where I have asserted that I know…

 

[tonyrey]

There is no evidence so far that there will be a reasonable

“established material reality” implies that “established mental reality” is an illusion. On what** rational **ground do you make that assumption? And on what **rational **ground do you assume that everything and everyone arise as a cumulative effect of other material entities?

You’ve insisted in previous posts that rationality cannot be a product of elements that are not, by themselves, rational. Why not?

No one has ever explained** how** that magical feat has been, is or will be performed.

Why must rationality be a phenomenon entire unto itself?

Rationality is not “a phenomenon entire unto itself”; it presupposes a rational being recognised in law and every other aspect of civilised society. Why cannot a person be an indivisible entity? Only because materialists assume nothing else is real except atomic structures.

The answer to this question has never been offered; but the assumption that rational comprehension, such as humans have been known to exercise, cannot arise from simpler, unthinking, unconscious parts, has been confidently asserted.

That belief is based on the total lack of evidence that “simpler, unthinking, unconscious parts” have magically acquired the power of comprehension. Not even a hint of a reasonable answer to this question has ever been offered…

 

[tonyrey]

And what would you count as evidence that we are not designed?

And what would you count as evidence that we are designed?

You only need evidence that we are designed if you assume already, without evidence, that we are designed.

You only need evidence that we are not designed if you assume already, without evidence, that we are not designed!

Having said that, of course, I can certainly point to particular facts that would call into question the intelligence and competence of any designer who made us, and other living entities…

I can certainly point to many facts that would call into question the intelligence and competence of any person who denies that we are designed! For a start you rely on the power of design to live** reasonably **and produce your arguments against the primacy of reason…

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Sair
**
You only need evidence that we are designed if you assume already, without evidence, that we are designed. **

This answer to follow has been provided to you many times by me and others.

If a thing has a high degree of complexity and appears to be designed, it is reasonable to infer that it was designed. Our planet and everything on it is of such vast and interlocking complexity (vastly more complex than the most complex design ever produced by man) that it seems unreasonable to assume that it all appeared by accident and without design.

Now what is your evidence that nothing in the universe was designed?

 

[tonyrey]

Sair
**
You only need evidence that we are designed if you assume already, without evidence, that we are designed. **

This answer to follow has been provided to you many times by me and others.

If a thing has a high degree of complexity and appears to be designed, it is reasonable to infer that it was designed. Our planet and everything on it is of such vast and interlocking complexity (vastly more complex than the most complex design ever produced by man) that it seems unreasonable to assume that it all appeared by accident and without design.

Now what is your evidence that nothing in the universe was designed?

The explanation literally goes from the Sublime to the ridiculous.

 

[Sair]

The accusation of “deliberate avoidance” exists only in your imagination!

Perhaps I am seeing things akin to ‘ad hominem’ - it was rather late when I wrote that reply…

Please cite specific examples of “bizarre and esoteric arguments” and “a vast cess pit of vague metaphysical assertions” in my posts.

There is one overarching example of a bizarre and esoteric argument, and that is the assertion, surrounded by its attendant philosophic fog, that the Christian God is ‘being-itself’.

Ditto - with substitution of “no front-loading of rationality”.

It didn’t take me long at all to explain why I and many others don’t consider valid the notion that intelligibility was front-loaded into the universe - all it takes is to point out that first, there’s no evidence of a front-loading rational entity (and you can’t simply point to the rationality of the universe as evidence - it’s open to other explanation, so you need direct evidence of the designer); and second, there is a large and growing body of evidence that all this could indeed have happened without any intelligent (name removed by moderator)ut - that intelligence is something that arises from the complexity of the universe, rather than a phenomenon that was inserted as a thing unto itself, right from the beginning.

Cite one specific example in any of my posts.

It is enough that I cannot cite a specific example of you - or anyone, for that matter -actually addressing the argument that we have no evidence of the existence of an intelligent designer outside religious mythology, or of intelligence itself in the absence of living, complex brains to exercise it. The only response I’ve yet seen is denial that it’s even possible for intelliegence, consciousness or selfhood to be emergent from matter and energy - all without any attendant discussion of what intelligence/consciousness/selfhood actually are, since apparently all you have to know is what they’re not!

 

[Sair]

The existence of gravity has nothing whatsoever to do with your power to choose what to believe about the existence of God.

But the argument is parallel - you and others claim that were there compelling evidence of God, this would undermine our free will to choose to believe in and love said god. Why is our free will then not compromised by other things that we might choose to believe in or not, were the evidence for them more dubious?

A statement which merely and clearly demonstrates you are not open-minded to such an extent that you are fully determined to reject any other view of reality but your own…

Perhaps I should have amended my closing point to say that if the state of argument and evidence remains as it is, I will go to my grave disbelieving in a personal god. What I think is that the evidence will swing more and more towards demonstrating that whether or not such a being exists ‘outside’ the universe, whatever that means, it is surplus to requirements as regards any explanation for how the universe (encompassing everything we can know exists, including ourselves) began and persists; the further any possible god-like being recedes from the realms of probability and evidentiary support, the less relevant any belief in such a being becomes to human life and flourishing.

 

[Sair]

Rationality is not “a phenomenon entire unto itself”; it presupposes a rational being recognised in law and every other aspect of civilised society. Why cannot a person be an indivisible entity? Only because materialists assume nothing else is real except atomic structures.

Why does rationality presuppose a rational being? Surely the latter presupposes the former, rather? A being capable of exercising rationality? But then we come to the meat of the argument - which, if either, came first, rationality or the being that exercises it? Clearly, your overall argument assumes the latter. Your rational god is claimed to exist eternally, so there is then no question of which came first - but that seems a bit too much like a non-explanation, really.

That belief is based on the total lack of evidence that “simpler, unthinking, unconscious parts” have magically acquired the power of comprehension. Not even a hint of a reasonable answer to this question has ever been offered…

It’s not that they have in themselves acquired the power of comprehension - I don’t believe nor suggest - nor does any neuroscientist - that individual neurons (nor the molecules of which they are constituted) have in themselves the power to process information in the ways that complex, interactive collections of neurons evidently do. By the same token, individual transistors within a computer have very limited capacity, but acting in concert, they can perform complex calculations in a fraction of the time it would take most human brains. Besides, the argument from ‘consciousness/intelligence as special reality’ seems to state that comprehension, intelligence, consciousness etc are fundamentally ‘simple’ entities, much as the all-powerful intelligent designer is a fundamentally ‘simple’ entity, despite having the capacity to bring universes into existence and plan their destiny. It seems a little disingenuous to accuse me of appealing to ‘magic’…

 

[Sair]

And what would you count as evidence that we are designed?

A demonstration of the existence of the designer - perhaps a human blueprint, or even just an explanation of how god built living things?

You only need evidence that we are not designed if you assume already, without evidence, that we are not designed!

Why do you think this reversal would work if you already assume my construction was inadequate? There is certainly plenty of evidence that we evolved from simpler living things; what’s more, there’s also plenty of evidence that if we were, in fact, designed, it was done by an incompetent tinkerer whom any real artisan would be ashamed to have apprenticed.

I can certainly point to many facts that would call into question the intelligence and competence of any person who denies that we are designed! For a start you rely on the power of design to live** reasonably **and produce your arguments against the primacy of reason…

You are conflating the intelligent design undertaken by evolved intelligent beings with the front-loaded intelligence you suppose was injected into the universe at its birth.

 

[Sair]

There is certainly plenty of evidence that we evolved from simpler living things; what’s more, there’s also plenty of evidence that if we were, in fact, designed, it was done by an incompetent tinkerer whom any real artisan would be ashamed to have apprenticed.

And just to head off the likely response that, “You’re using human parameters to judge God!”, I would point out that the other side of the argument uses human parameters to assume design in the first place.

 

[Sair]

Sair
**
You only need evidence that we are designed if you assume already, without evidence, that we are designed. **

This answer to follow has been provided to you many times by me and others.

If a thing has a high degree of complexity and appears to be designed, it is reasonable to infer that it was designed. Our planet and everything on it is of such vast and interlocking complexity (vastly more complex than the most complex design ever produced by man) that it seems unreasonable to assume that it all appeared by accident and without design.

Now what is your evidence that nothing in the universe was designed?

I don’t suppose that nothing in the universe was designed - there are plenty of examples of design undertaken by evolved, intelligent beings.

I’m afraid the answer you think you’ve provided does not stand up to the weight of evidence for natural evolution. The argument from design rests, ultimately, on an argument from incredulity - “I can’t imagine how such-and-such phenomenon could have come about without intelligent design, therefore God - and specifically the Christian God.” I’m more than happy to accept intelligent design, if anyone can provide me with independent evidence for the existence of a designer (that is, evidence that doesn’t boil down to, “The universe is complex and intricate, and we know humans make complex and intricate things, therefore there must be a superhuman designer who made the universe!”) and an explanation based on scientific investigation of how the designer went about his work. That’s all.

It amazes me that so many religious believers argue that when it comes to moral judgements, we can’t evaluate God by human standards; yet when it comes to the idea that the universe was ‘designed’, they use our familiar human behaviours to suppose that there’s a god who did the same kinds of things we do.

 

[tonyrey]

The accusation of "deliberate

“Perhaps” is a pusillanimous evasion of your ferocious accusation:

a vast cess pit of vague metaphysical assertions".

BTW It should be “cesspit” - which is far more applicable to the notion that persons come from putrefaction!

Please cite specific

examples of “bizarre and esoteric arguments” and “a vast cess pit of vague metaphysical assertions” in my posts.There is one overarching example of a bizarre and esoteric argument, and that is the assertion, surrounded by its attendant philosophic fog, that the Christian God is ‘being-itself’.

Please cite the post in which I have stated that “God is ‘being-itself’”.

Ditto - with substitution of “no front-loading of rationality”.

It didn’t take me long at all to explain why I and many others don’t consider valid the notion that intelligibility was front-loaded into the universe…

That is hardly surprising because it is a distortion of theism! It could be asserted with equal facility - and far more aptly from your point of view - that unintelligibility is a fundamental feature of reality. Is it really?
.

… all it takes is to point out that first, there’s no evidence of a front-loading rational entity

“front-loading” is a farcical distortion. (material of course!)

(and you can’t simply point to the rationality of the universe as evidence - it’s open to other explanation, so you need direct evidence of the designer)…

There is a significant difference between “rationality” and “intelligibility”…
.

.; and second, there is a large and growing body of evidence that all this could indeed have happened without any intelligent (name removed by moderator)ut…

Please give one precise detail of the explanatory mechanism. “could” is a very weak foundation for such dogmatic and trenchant materialism which is revered as totally exempt from being “surrounded by its attendant philosophic fog”! Matter is obviously self-explanatory, is it not?

• that intelligence is something that arises from the complexity of the universe, rather than a phenomenon that was inserted as a thing unto itself, right from the beginning.

Yet another distortion.
Please explain precisely **how **intelligence (a psychological power) can arise from complexity (a physical arrangement)?

Cite one specific

example in any of my posts.It is enough that I cannot cite a specific example of you - or anyone, for that matter -actually addressing the argument that we have no evidence of the existence of an intelligent designer outside religious mythology, or of intelligence itself in the absence of living, complex brains to exercise it.

What is the precise evidence that the mind is merely the **product **of brain activity? A lump of tissue is your sole source of insight?!

The only response I’ve yet seen is denial that it’s even possible for intelliegence, consciousness or selfhood to be emergent from matter and energy -

False! The response is that we have direct and indisputable experience of our own intangible thoughts, feelings, choices and decisions - which are** the sole and primary basis of all our conclusions**.

.

…all without any attendant discussion of what intelligence/consciousness/selfhood actually are, since apparently all you have to know is what they’re not!

Please explain what they are… with detailed evidence… since apparently you know beyond all shadow of doubt…