Look at This Watch
Kansas, eh. I have to tell you, I’m having second thoughts about that move to Topeka.
This time, Darwin’s critics insist they are not religiously motivated creationists, but are scientists who believe that certain things in the universe, including human life, are too complex to be explained by natural causes and must be the product of an intelligent creator. They call this theory ”intelligent design,” and while they resist publicly declaring that a Christian God’s hand is at work, they also suggest that proponents of a key tenet of evolutionary theory — that changes over time can result in new species — are atheists or secular humanists.
Atheists or secular humanists – ew ick. Those nasty proponent people wouldn’t just be scientists would they? Rationalists? People like that? Whose atheism or ‘secular humanism’ is just a by-product of the fact that they don’t look for magical explanations of things in general? Is that possible? No, no, of course not; stupid of me; they’re part of that movement of card-carrying secret-handshake-giving atheists that Dylan Evans entertained us all with last week. And yet – proponents of natural selection and the mutability of species probably don’t believe that Bugs Bunny is an actual existing rabbit, either, but they also probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, or worrying about what kind of abugsist they are. As Russell pointed out and as a lot of people reminded Dylan E last week, we’re all atheists about an infinite number of gods; atheists just include the local god on the list. Big deal.
But I still want to know – and no one has yet explained it satisfactorily – why, if IDers think everything is too complex not to have been designed by a designer – then why wouldn’t they think exactly, but exactly, the same thing about the designer? Why aren’t they required to acknowledge that that’s an infinite regress, and therefore kind of a waste of time and probably the wrong answer? Huh? Why? If the universe is so complex (and I wouldn’t dream of denying that it is complex – very complex – no argument from me on that score) that it needs a designer to design it – then what the hell must that designer be like?! I ask you! And if that’s what it’s like – where did it come from? People get baffled enough asking where Shakespeare came from, but a designer who designed all this stuff leaves Shakespeare in the dust (the designer designed the dust, don’t forget). So that designer is one complex thing, am I right? So if a complex thing needs a designer – then who designed the damn designer? Don’t just say god – that’s a tautology, and begging the question, and going around in a stupid circle. Say something convincing. If you do, I’ll have James Randi buy you lunch.
OB,
I’m here to confess. I am the Designer! I designed you, I designed me, I designed self. Me designed I. I m-m-me-me mine! I am the Walrus…googoogajube!
OK then, wish me luck, I’m off for Kansas. I know they’ll understand me there, even if they don’t…really! Huh?
CraaaanbeerrrySauuuccce!
The IDiots are always going on about how science conflates “methodological naturalism” and “philosophical naturalism.” My first reaction is to say, “So? Everyone I know is a philosophical naturalist! What sane person isn’t? Piss off!”
But the real issue is best responded to by OB’s question here, which points at the heart of the matter: If naturalism is so bad, what’s the alternative? Supernaturalism? I’m not too clear on what (methodological or philosophical?) supernaturalism actually entails, but by all observations of the opponents of the so-called “presumption of naturalism,” it requires us to give up fundamental principles of reason. For example, the law of non-contradiction is blatantly violated by declaring that “All really complex things require a designer” while at the same time declaring that “At least one complex thing requires no designer.”
Now, as any student of first-year formal logic knows, ANYTHING follows from a contradiction. So if your method embraces the assertion of outright naked contradictions as fundamental premises, you can support any conclusion – no matter how silly or contrary to all other evidence it is.
This is much easier than all that messy science stuff: No lab space required, nor time-consuming grant applications, nor patient data analysis. Instead just find some well-off religious fanatic to pay your bills and make shit up all day long!
Nice work if you can get it.
Well, if you can live with yourself. But I suppose if you’ve already given up reason, you can easily conclude that everything you do is justified, no matter how repulsive.
“This is much easier than all that messy science stuff”
Exactly. Which is why such answers are so damned unsatisfying – so boring and limited and flat. The reality is the exact opposite of what the Dylan Evanses and Philip Blonds like to tell us – religion is not better at wonder and the transcendent and beauty and rich ideas – it’s vastly worse. It’s like saying ‘because’ to every ‘why’ question.
How would “methodological super-naturalism” work in science? That’s easy – just look at all the great ideas and progress in the natural sciences between about 400 AD and 1600 AD. The world is a parallelogram because the Bible says it’s got four corners. Eagles fly so high the sun burns their feathers and that’s a warning to us not to approach the mysteries of God. The continent of America can’t exist because any animals couldn’t have come off the Ark. I picked up a copy of “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom” at a second-hand sale the other week – an oldie but a goldie – and it’s packed with gems like this. Galileo and Darwin were just the tip of the iceberg. Two of my favourites are a bunch of American Lutherans printing a denunciation of a Sun-centred solar system in 1873(!), and Calvin threatening a guy with execution because he dared describe Judea, accurately, as a desert instead of a “land of milk and honey”.
From Darwin’s introduction to The Descent of Man:”It has often and confidently been asserted, that man’s origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”(Modern Library Edition) The IDers try to convince people that their objections are “scientific”, but are there any rigorous research programs in biology which are driven by ID as opposed to evolutionary biology?
Also, please check out “Endless Forms Most Beautiful:The New Science of Evo Devo” by Sean Carroll. It is a well-written description of some of the latest research in evolutionary developmental biology by one of its most active researchers – the genetic controls of the growth of form and the deep genetic connections across animal phyla are the focus. Just one more piece of important evidence supporting “just a theory”.
OB, you’re either completely dumb or just utterly blinkered by your faith in your secular god Darwin.
Obviously the Designer doesn’t need to have been designed because the -definition- of the Designer includes that He, oops, I mean, it, wasn’t designed but just -is-. Sheesh. How can you not understand that the Creator has always just -been-, yet the Universe (or whatever the fundamental level of reality is) -must- have been designed, otherwise where could it have come from?
Actually, the impossible regression argument agains the existence of a God is fundamentally flawed, because it depends on rejecting the definition of God. That is to say: one of the fundamental defining features of God (the creator) is that He is outside (or surerior to) time, space, and physical laws: he is ‘super-natural’. To argue that He cannot exist because His existence would break physical laws is therefore meaningless.
One cannot argue against the existence of God on the grounds of His compatibility or otherwise with natural laws without having a priori rejected His existence… which is circular reasoning, of a sort. Of course, the deist position is bereft of logic, but that doesn’t matter since belief in God implies requires the acceptance of a view of the world which allows non-logical, physiocally impossible processes.
Am I making sense?
Thought not.
Sure makes sense, Outeast – but that nicely demonstrates why ID cannot be considered scientific in any sense. If you want to _scientifically_ prove there’s indications of design, your Designer is going to have to play by the rules, i.e. be subject to the laws of physics in a wide sense. Insisting on a non-physical, supernatural Designer not subject to any law (even ones we haven’t discovered yet) is the same as insisting you have all six aces in your hands during a card game.
What!? You don’t believe in Bugs either?
Yer one of them Yosemite Samists, aren’t ya?
But come now… We all know the only reason you don’t believe in the living Bugs Bunny is because of your severe emotional scars and inability to trust… Probably, you were treated poorly by some guy dressed as a cartoon rabbit as a kid.
That wasn’t the *real* Bugs Bunny. The *real* Bugs Bunny is transcendant and glorious (and doesn’t have a zipper up the back of his costume). Give your life to him and have peace… Or an endless supply of giant cartoon carrots… Or something like that.
That is to say:’ one of the fundamental defining features of God (the creator) is that He is outside (or surerior to) time, space, and physical laws: he is ‘super-natural’.’
No, that is incorrect. He still had to have an origin. You can’t argue on one hand that design takes intelligence and then accept an original intelligence, it simply does not follow.
Also:
‘To argue that He cannot exist because His existence would break physical laws is therefore meaningless.’
No exactly the opposite. If he does not exist outside of our knowledge of physical laws he simply can’t exist.
To exist he must have some form of mass, which must take up space somewhere, and on and on it goes. To say he exists outside of the physical world would make him meaningless in any sense of the word.
As I recall Hume pointing out: (1) to explain why something (reality in this case) is the way it is, you only need a cause sufficient to account for what you are trying to explain, therefore, no need for infinite all loving perfect being to explain the imperfect largely unloving universe; (2) creation is a kind of cause-effect relation, but to establish a causal relation you need to notice some regularity in the association of events (at minimum), therefore it is hopeless to defend the claim that God caused the universe, seeing as that implies a one time only event.
Science is what makes us feel cozy and warm and very, very special. If your theory of evolution (and it’s only a theory, remember) doesn’t do that, then it’s very, very bad for baby and you must stop talking about it. You evil-lution people are even worse than those liars who say Sky Daddy is “transcendant” and unknowable. How can baby cuddle up with that? Sky Daddy is big and warm and fuzzy and He will give you candy if you’re good and believe in Him. I’m moving to Kansas, where they don’t allow meanies like you to take away baby’s candy!
Karl
Seventh Day Infantist
Oh yeah? But in Kansas people try to kill your dog! There’s just no way to win, is there. Or do I mean there’s no place like home. One of those.
“My pet theory is that God is the end-product of human evolution, who then creates the Universe in an act of backwards causation.”
I’m sorry, but hasn’t Merlijn traded in
his Infinite Regress for a brand new
Viscious Circularity?
Good theory, Elliott. Too bad God seems to have been too busy to attend the MIT time travel conference. If she had shown up there, it would have cleared up the whole issue.
http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/
I wonder if the people at The Onion have been reading all the above?
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4119
Ha! Thanks for that, Stewart.
Chance said: “You can’t argue on one hand that design takes intelligence and then accept an original intelligence, it simply does not follow… If he does not exist outside of our knowledge of physical laws he simply can’t exist.”
I think you miss the point. Our notion of existence – and the rules which govern existence within our worl – were conceived and born by God. Within the universe all things must obey the rules of that universe (unless God explicitly causes something to happen otherwise, which as an all-powerful being He can do): the fact that all things within the universe must obey physical rules means that the sceptical, scientific approach is valid within that universe regardless of the existence or otherwise of a God. However, God Himself is not subject to these laws… for a clumsy but simple model, imagine creating a flatland. Within that flatland all things would have to obey the laws implicit to two-dimensionality… you, however, would still exist in three dimensions – that is, you would not be subject to the laws of your creation.
Spece, time, energy… all these are creations of God; He Himself is not subject to the laws governing these.
Two last points: one, I don’t believe in a God or any other creator – I’m just saying why it is that physics/science/logic-based arguments against God’s existence are fallacious. And two, as Merlijn pointed out this does carry the implication that God is not a matter for scientific proof either…
The ID lot are fallacy cubed.
Erm …
The simple word for the ID-iots and creationists is LIARS, I’m afraid.
The other alternative is stupid, I suppose.
As somone else has said, it’s so much easier than all that messy science …..
Incidentally, the believers, including the previous poster, who think that “god” incorporates everthing and everywhere, and (etc) has already been defined by the mathematicians – as the set of all possible sets – which cannot exist.
This is the best proof I’ve ever seen of the non-existence of any god.
“Spece, time, energy… all these are creations of God; He Himself is not subject to the laws governing these.”
Yes but you have to assume that in order for that to be valid – and that’s an awfully large (and unsupported by anything in particular other than further assumption, surely) assumption to make. Why assume that? Why not, Ockham’s razor fashion, just not assume big unsupported ‘supernatural’ items like that?
But the whole god argument begins (and ends) with an assumption. You could never get to that point (let all alone all the frills surrounding it) on the basis of any available evidence. And once you’ve done that… imagine someone saying “Please, no, I haven’t had breakfast yet, I’ve already believed six impossible things, I couldn’t possibly manage a seventh.” (Not even a wafer-thin one?)
I know. That’s just it. People wouldn’t argue all this nonsense if they weren’t hell-bent on defending the basic assumption. If they thought this designer was a giant malevolent cockroach…they would see the assumption as an assumption, and give it up.
The SET of all possible sets cannot exist. No, I guess not (Consider the set S of all sets that are not elements of themselves. Such a definition leads to paradoxes). But the CLASS of all possible sets may exist (a class is not a set, but similar to it), if I’m not mistaken. Ergo: God is a class act.
Science can only prove the existence of certain things (through measurement, using repeatable experiments etc.), God may very well transcend space-time. Only we’ll never know through the application science. Maybe one day we’ll have transcendental science…. (or is that an oxymoron?)
That’s why I prefer, for now at least, to be agnostic in principle and atheist in practice.
Ah, now I must take issue with one of your assumptions; if their parents and grandparents had believed in the giant malevolent cockroach, it’d still be you who had the wrong idea for not believing in it. People have worshipped far screwier things than that. Of course, the IDers are bending over backwards not to be seen to be pushing the notion that their designer is the one in whose image they claim we’ve been created, so whether the designer is more like a human than a cockroach doesn’t even have to be discussed. The strategy is, after all, to call into question and destroy any possibilities other than the biblically sanctioned one.
I discussed religion once with a childhood friend of my father’s who lives in NYC. He believes, in at least a vague way, and gave as an example the miracle of fish able to survive the winter in the frozen ponds of Central Park. He’s a lovely, gentle man and has at least the brainpower it took to become a professor of nuclear physics and yet, presumably because this was something he wanted to be true, he didn’t bring in the counter-argument of all the other species that couldn’t and didn’t survive similar circumstances. If millions don’t have what it takes and one does, how likely does that make it that an all-powerful designer had a hand in it?
Isn’t it amazing that the people who need a god not only have one, but have the kind they need (cockroach, Pillsbury Doughboy, orbiting teapot, whatever)? This constant perfect matching must be further evidence of divine intervention because, I mean, it couldn’t just “happen,” could it?
Tingey
“Incidentally, the believers, including the previous poster…”
Obviously you missed my explicit statement that I am not a believer. Which brings me on to…
OB
“People wouldn’t argue all this nonsense if they weren’t hell-bent on defending the basic assumption.”
Well, many paople, maybe. Personally, I argue ‘all this nonsense’ while not believing in the basic assumption at all – because it can be interesting, because the intellectual game appeals, and because like it or not it’s a massive part of out heritage and simply to ignore or deny it (faith and theology, that is) is to miss out on a rich and exciting field.
One wouldn’t refure to look at, read about, examine and explore Plato, Ockham, Kant, whoever you like simply because science had proved them wrong. The thought itself is fascinating and the exploration thereof can be rewarding.
outeast
I don’t think anyone’s trying make a case for not reading, examining or exploring anyone just because what they wrote centuries ago isn’t upheld by what we know today. We can’t hope to understand anything about how people lived, say, one thousand years ago without immersing ourselves in the (predominantly) religious thought of the time. But it isn’t Plato, Ockham or Kant who are the bad guys in Kansas right now. There one is dealing with people with a very real axe to grind, whose aim is to prevent up-to-date knowledge from reaching the children in their state and they’re trying to remove the power to decide the matter from people who don’t agree with them. Atheists do not constitute a threat to the propagation of religious thought, whether or not such thought has any merit to it. On the other hand, we are seeing a most definite and powerful attempt to stifle ideas that are not grounded in religious teaching. These discussions are unfortunately not as academic as we’d like them to be.
“it isn’t Plato, Ockham or Kant who are the bad guys in Kansas right now”
Don’t equate partial defence with support (or build up pretty straw dolls) here; I’m virulently opposed to the horror and falsehood of the Kansas Kangaroo Trial IDiots.
Initially what I was objecting to was OB’s claim that the appeal to an intelligent designer is *per se* a circular argument – it isn’t, although it’s theology, not science.
Although fighting to keep the IDiots out of science classrooms is essential, engaging with the IDots and their cohorts on the basis of science is valueless (because they are not scientists but religious zealots, and thus unamenable to science). There’s another forum where one may be able to engage them, however: theology.
There *is* a knee-jerk (as opposed to considered) rejection of the theological philosophy behind ID going on here; as I pointed out above, it’s implicit in the claim that the ID philosophical theorem of God as first cause is tautological (it’s also implcit in the slaps I’ve been getting for my comments here by those all too ready to equate partial defence with support). However, if one really engages on the philosophical level one finds that the IDots’ position is not just religious – it’s *bad theology*.
To me, taking on the challenge of savaging the IDiots in their own areana seems a worthwhile cause. We sure as shit won’t whip ’em in a rationalist arena – they won’t even show up.
I did read attentively enough not to bracket you with the believers. I do think I understand what you’re saying. But (and I think this was one of OB’s problems with it, too), can one engage them or anyone else in the theological arena without making (even hypothetically) certain assumptions? Assumptions on which they’ve based everything. I think the onus being on proof rather than disproof is not a principle we dare neglect for even a split second (I’m thinking here of how religions have behaved throughout history whenever they’ve had real power – burning people at the stake rather than just forbidding them to use condoms). Again, this is not to say that understanding thoughts we now consider fallacious is without merit, but doesn’t it boil down to the impossibility of winning any argument with a person who is prepared to resort to mumbo-jumbo including the unevidenced existence of a god who can by definition trump any rule you might come up with that could circumscribe its behaviour or abilities? Nothing can be nailed down. Maybe their theology is flawed to the same degree and for the same reasons as their science, but unless there’s something demonstrably real about their theology, so what? Of course they’re interpreting the scientists’ boycott of the hearings as a victory, but all the scientists have really done is decline an invitation to “come into my padded cell and let’s talk about it.” It is not reasonable, after what the last 150 years of scientific research have come up with, to have to justify it all in front of – how many? – three believing Christians in Kansas. Maybe it’s a good thing, along the lines of what OB just wrote about Ratzinger’s election helping to show up the church for what it really is. Maybe it’ll take Kansas and a few other states being written off international education maps for their unbridled descent into the Dark Ages, which doesn’t make it less of a tragedy that young people are having their intellectual horizons artifically narrowed.
Oh, and I meant to add:
You might be prepared to argue with them in their theological arena and they would happily keep you in the discussion. But don’t fool yourself that they would be doing in (can’t avoid the risibility) “good faith.” Their “Wedge” strategy is well known and every argument we deign to let ourselves get involved in merely advances it.
I do take your points, and I wasn’t suggesting Kansas as a suitable place for theological debate (again, the Kansas thing is about science, and ID is not science).
From personal experience, though, I’ve had much more success in forcing the faith-driven (not just the religious) to look as their assumptions when tackling them on equal terms that when arguing from a solely skeptical standpoint. I have, for example, debated moral issues with muslims and managed to make a couple eevaluate their assumptions precisely because where others have been reduced to ridicule I have been able to enter into some degree of scriptural debate.
You’re absolutely right that many of the IDers will not engage even in this kind of debate in ‘good faith’ – but in the battle for hearts and minds maybe we can instigate out own wedge strategy.
I’ll meet you at least halfway there and concede that there are people who believe only because they’ve never been exposed to the possibility of an alternative to belief (or brought up to believe that non-believers are mere mouthpieces for Satan) and if we refuse to talk to them, we won’t be helping matters. And it is known to have happened that the first chink in that armour came from a realisation of inconsistencies in doctrine and/or scripture, leading to a process of (gasp) thinking.
In that sense, maybe, something can be done. However, I would suggest that the term “wedge” is really appropriate only to one of the sides in this conflict. There being no initial evidence that anything the religious side says is correct, it’s not a question of targetting the weakest points, because there isn’t a single strong one. It’s appropriate to them because their target is one based on a great deal of accumulated evidence (let’s restrict this to evolution being the only theory so far proposed that fits the facts we have; there are no atheists worth taking seriously who are parading around claiming to have proof of god’s non-existence). They are trying to make the entire structure collapse by hitting at the points where they claim evolution has the weakest case (of course they’re not doing that with proper science, either). It’s all an effort to negate, trying to make science go away by screaming loudly about the answers it supposedly doesn’t have. And they are trying not to say too much about what’s supposed to happen if they succeed. There are still plenty of gaps in our scientific knowledge, we have no Grand Unified Theory of Everything that explains every single thing perfectly. They do have one, which they will stuff into any vacuum they succeed in creating. And it all does work perfectly, as long as you’re prepared to make one assumption, without evidence, up front. Those of us who can’t make it will have to make do with our gap-ridden edifice in which the building blocks of what is standing represent what we have learned from millenia of living in the real world.
I think your interpretation of what the wedge is is mistaken.
I think it’s not about targeting us at our weakest point in the sense of ‘evolution is the weakest point in the rationalist/materialist/scientific concept array’ but that the belief in free speech and in hearing all sides of a debate combined with a general level of suspicion about ‘science’ are the weakest areas in modern secular America. The wedge strategists want to exploit these characteristics of society to give ID a legitimate voice – and from there to force religion back into the centre ground of political and academic hegemony.
They want to use ‘our own’ (liberals’ – in the very broadest, most apolitical sense of the word) weapons against us. It’s working, too – look at the pathetic way that the press fall over themselves to give the IDots a platform as soon as they hear the liberal buzzwords of ‘balance’, ‘controversy’… Christ, even ‘skepticism’ (you’re surely aware the IDiots call themselves ‘skeptics’ – of evolution). They’re pretty savvy.
The point of a truly skeptical wedge would not be to crack the IDiots’ ‘arguments’ but to create an atmosphere of enquiry and thought among the dogmatic. Possibly the place to start there is to reach people with the concept of actually thinking about faith, beauty (remember, part of the reaction against ‘science’ is because people feel it to be not merely devoid of beauty but the antithesis thereof), and the meaning of truth.
What I’m talking about is a wedge to crack certitude; to introduce enquiry… and unlimately, perhaps, critical thinking to current fundamentalists.
Fuck it, I can dream, no?
I wasn’t claiming to be making an exhaustive survey of the Wedge. Their own documents are probably the best guide to what it really is. Of course, there’s a combination of different things going on here and the evolution battle is merely one of the most visible fronts. I don’t disagree that they’re trying turn instruments of liberalism against liberalism. And never mind the appropriation of the term “skeptic,” they’re using a pretence of science to attack science (how better to defeat your enemy than to pretend to be him?). (Here, though, there is room to play with accepted and literal definitions of such terms; I have argued that a believer in god could be the real skeptic because he is unable to believe that anything could have arisen randomly, which is merely the ID line on a broader canvas.) “Enquiry and thought among the dogmatic” is certainly worth encouraging – without offering up what’s beyond controversy as a bargaining chip in the spirit of fairness.
Your right to dream is, rest assured, not under attack.
“without offering up what’s beyond controversy as a bargaining chip in the spirit of fairness”
Oh yes – I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with you.