But, But, But
I still don’t get it. I don’t see how ID fans and Anthony Flew get past the first, obvious objection.
At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
But how can that be a good explanation? How can it be an explanation at all? How can it be anything other than just an ‘I don’t know’ translated into something that sounds more impressive? Other than hand-waving? I don’t get it. Because if the origin of life and the complexity of nature require explanation – which of course they do – why doesn’t or wouldn’t any possible ‘super-intelligence’ one could come up with also require explanation? Other than by stipulation. But that’s no good – that’s just a cheat. Just adding on ‘that doesn’t require further explanation’ isn’t explanation (let alone good explanation), it’s just arranging the deck ahead of time. Origin of life, complexity of nature, require explanation; good; let’s say a super-intelligence designed and created them; very well; but then what is the explanation of the super-intelligence then?
I don’t understand why this problem doesn’t just stop the whole ridiculous fuss in its tracks. There must be a reason, I must be missing something, but nobody’s told me what it is yet.
There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife. Yet biologists’ investigation of DNA “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved,” Flew says in the new video, “Has Science Discovered God?”
But if almost unbelievable complexity of arrangments means that intelligence must have been involved, and necessarily an intelligence that designed this complexity has to be more complex than whatever it is designing, then what explains the intelligence? Where did it come from, what (or who) made it so complex and so intelligent? And where is it now?
I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why this argument has legs.
“biologists’ investigation of DNA “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved,” Flew says in the new video”
Do you think Flew told the biologists?
How does the phrase go…”those infinite spaces fill me with dread.”
The spaces are large and small, but equally dreadful. Thankfully, we have God(TM) to fill the spaces quite nicely.
What happens after you die? God.
Where did that flagellum come from? God. (Get it? Good, then you can stop it with your pestering inquisitiveness already.)
I don’t fault the ID-ists for putting God in the gaps. They found an easy answer which requires little thought. (Burger King’s menu should be so simple.) Where I find fault is their specific choice of God.
They spent a ton of time researching the subject, and managed to find the cause of all life on Earth to be the God with whom they grew up. Can that be considered intellectually honest? “Oh, golly, the God I worship just happens to be the ‘scientific’ reason for life, too? What luck! That same God told the President to run for office!”
What is it about easy answers that makes them so guiltlessly comforting? Do they shut off a switch in your brain?
I thought Flew recanted alot of this after reading further arguments last year. Was that not so?
OB said: “I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why this argument has legs.”
What argument? ID is supported by *no* arguments, only rationalizations. A rationalization differs from an argument in that the conclusion is determined in advance and the “premises” are chosen for their ability to persuade the uncritical to accept the conclusion, not for clarity or plausibility or any other rational standard. Sadly, the vast majority of humanity is incapable of distinguishing reasoned argument from rank rationalization on any subject.
Of course, you’re perfectly aware of that OB. But your closing statement of mystification doesn’t jibe with that awareness. The particular rationalization under discussion here has legs because its conclusion about human special-ness has legs, period. As in all rationalizations, once you’ve spotted this pseudo-argument as such you can safely ignore the disingenuous “premises” and “reasoning” when asking why people buy into it. The appeal of a rationalization entirely arises from people’s emotional or political attachment to the conclusion, never from reason or evidence. If you keep looking at rationalizations as arguments (and calling them arguments), you obscure their real appeal.
I dunno, G. The ‘argument’ which bothers OB (and others among us) so much is bothersome because it is weak, yet so damn appealing.
The religious/political argument that is ID is no different than any argument for the existence of God (“Can someone please fill this gap over here?”) It makes sense as long as one does not contemplate it.
That is satisfies people other than children and the insane makes me wonder if those words need a broader definition.
For me, Mark Twain’s observation often comes to mind when this subject comes up: “Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that it is what it was done for. If the Eiffel Tower were not representing the world’s age, the skin of paint on the pnnable-knob at its summit would represent man’s share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.” (‘I. Was the World Made for Man’ in ‘The Damned Human Race’)
Well, that’s the point I was trying to get at – albeit unclearly. So let me try again.
If you look for the appeal of such beliefs in the ‘arguments’ believers offer, then you’re looking in the wrong place entirely: People don’t believe such conclusions because of the sham “reasoning” or the carefully vague and plausible-sounding “premises.” The pre-conceived, unassailable “conclusion” – which is no such thing, really, but is rather a presupposition – is ALREADY BELIEVED without the need for any of the rationalizations offered in after-the-fact support.
Probably the one thing all religious believers share (even the mystics Meera Nanda talks about in her critical review of Sam Harris’ book) is some core belief that the whole universe has as its purpose their own sweet selves – their immortal souls, their karmic cycles, their redemption, their very existence. Whether humans believe such things out of sheer egocentrism (Twain’s charge) or because of more complex psychological causes is an interesting question, but what we ought to be clear about is that such beliefs are NOT conclusions drawn after careful, rational evaluation of evidence. Looking at the rationalizations believers offer as if they are actual arguments only confuses the issue. It gets us no closer to understanding why people believe. And it over-dignifies empty rationalizations by treating them as if they were actual arguments, even bad arguments. But they aren’t.
“There must be a reason, I must be missing something, but nobody’s told me what it is yet.”
Well, there’s your problem right there, OB – you assume there’s a reason for everything (up to and including the Universe). Life would be a lot simpler if you didn’t make this assumption! God said so – that’s all you need to know.
G, I couldn’t agree more.
The nub of the theist problem seems to be anthrocentrism, which I think stems from the inability of less educated people to fathom how extremely complex even inanimate matter is. They seem to equate complexity with consciousness. If people understood that matter is inherently complex, and in some combinations can give the appearance of consciousness, without consciousness in fact having anything to do with the situation, they would be much less addicted to the idea that there is a supernatural mind behind all of reality. Human beings see conciousness, (because they’re immersed in it), the way they see faces in clouds or in the foam on their cappuccinos. Even the tiniest newt is extremely complex in its structure and functions, but is far from having anything like consciousness as humans know it.
G, good point.
In the USA, God is presumed to exist. He’s on our money, in our Pledge, and in our favorite curses. It’s so much a part of our culture that people take God for granted, like parallel lines not touching. Problem is that no one ever explains why God exists in the first place. He/She/It just has to, right?
I’ve a friend who is determined to become a Jesuit. He and have argued about the Church time and again. By and by, he and I set aside the ills of the Church, and over the course of many bottles of wine, we managed to get mired on the one most sticky point — Why do you need God? Isn’t the concept of death/eternity confusing enough without having to muddle even further with a God in the mix?
Ungh. Unfortunately, as I stated at the beginning, that discussion is not taking place in the US (or elsewhere.) The discussion begins with God already in play, and calling some of the shots – and drawing the boundries, too.
“But your closing statement of mystification doesn’t jibe with that awareness. The particular rationalization under discussion here has legs because its conclusion about human special-ness has legs, period.”
Yes but – it still seems puzzling to me that it has legs for instance in court. And it still puzzles me that after all this time, Flew suddenly finds the complexity ‘argument’ convincing. How does he manage to overlook (or answer?) the regress problem?
I sympathize with what motivates that “Yes but…” I feel the same way when the wind blows westerly. But today I feel a more noreasterly breeze, so…
As we’ll see shortly in Dover, the argument *doesn’t* have any legs in court. The judge is going to hand down a smackdown, as the kids would say if they talked about this sort of thing.
As for Flew… He might manage to overlook a lot of things now that he did not or would not as a younger man. I’m not being ageist: I met Professor Flew four or five years ago at a CSICOP conference. I snagged the seat next to him at dinner, and we talked extensively. That conversation gave me ample cause not to take his conversion/confusion of a few years later very seriously at all. I just don’t think the most plausible explanation for his change of heart is that he suddenly found bad arguments much more convincing than previously.
Look for the legs elsewhere, says I. ‘Til the wind changes, at least.
Ah – eyewitness testimony. Very useful. Thanks, G – that does actually help with the puzzlement. (Sad.)