Evidence, ID, and God
by MikeGeneIn a previous post, I noted where Richard Dawkins says, "If evidence for a Supreme Being were found, I would change my mind instantly - with pride and great surprise. Would I find it comforting? What matters is what is true and we discover the truth by evidence and not by what we would like." But as I explained, there is no evidence to think Dawkins would ever change his mind. It may be comforting for people to think he would, but, as Dawkins says, what matters is truth and there is no supporting evidence for such a truth claim.
In fact, it gets worse for Dawkins ever since it has become clear that he is spear-heading a new movement as part of some international culture war. For Dawkins to change his mind, he would have to betray all his followers, whom, according to Dawkins, are continually victimized by the religionists. So we're talking about a mysterious form of evidence that is not only powerful enough to cause Dawkins to instantly change his mind, but a type of evidence that would compel him to betray all his allies and abandon his new movement.
But it gets even worse than this. Over at Uncommon Descent, Bill Dembski linked to a video where Dawkins is interviewed by William Crawley. Crawley makes an interesting point that seems to put a huge hole in Dawkins' signature argument.
Crawley introduces the cosmological fine-tuning argument as evidence for God and Dawkins' immediate response is to ask where then did God come from? Crawley then notes this argument could be used anytime God is invoked to explain something about the world and Dawkins agrees. But then Crawley notes an interesting point. Since any piece of physical evidence for the existence of God can be neutered by asking where God came from, then the denial of God's existence is not a matter of evidence. No matter how compelling the physical evidence for God's existence, Dawkins can sidestep God-belief with his question. This means his atheism is not a function of evidence and all the talk about needing evidence is a sham. Or as Crawley says to Dawkins, "philosophically, you could never accept any evidence which points to the existence of God." He also adds, "you are, in principle, ruling out the possibility of evidence for God."
How might this relate to ID? Most critics of ID hear "God" when "ID" is spoken or written, and thus the same type of criticisms are often transplanted to the ID debate (even when they don't fit). In this case, a critic might argue that if we conclude biotic feature X was designed by an intelligent designer, the explanation does not explain where the designer came from, and we should thus reject it. But if so, then it would appear that there can never really be any evidence for ID for such a critic. Any such possible evidence, gathered from the physical world, will be similarly neutered and discarded, meaning the critics' rejection of ID, like Dawkins, was never a function of the evidence. The critic has, in principle, ruled out the possibility of evidence for ID.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
This amounts to default in favor of infinite regress causality. But it also raises a practical question. For such critics what is the point of research that affirms hypotheses since such confirmation could not answer the design of the intelligent designer question?
Comment by Bradford — March 13, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
This has puzzled me about Dawkins from day one. There are many arguments one can make against ID, some good some bad. But the "well then, who designed the designer?" argument is, perhaps, the worst. It's a child's argument. I cannot figure out why he keeps invoking it.
Comment by David Heddle — March 13, 2007 @ 9:15 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
David, I think Dawkins has become intellectually soft and lazy as he ages. It is reflected in his writings over the course of time.
Comment by Bradford — March 13, 2007 @ 9:26 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
I think he's using Ockham's Razor, you can't invoke something more complex than what you're trying to explain, because you're contradicting yourself in a way (although I think that reasoning has failed several times in science).
But I think the point of the blog is well put, if you're going to rule out more complex causes a priori then no amount of evidence for God or ID will convince you, so it's not really about the evidence.
Comment by Guts — March 13, 2007 @ 9:42 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Why does God have to be more complex? Could it be that God is less complex and the most simple being?
I was thinking about buying his book until I read some reviews that pointed this out and I thought "how sophomoric". Given that this is the level of sophistication one could expect in his book I thought it wise to save my money. Honestly I am still sort of shocked at his level of unsophistication.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — March 13, 2007 @ 9:57 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
In what way is an eternal conscious being who can fine tune a universe more simple than a finely tuned universe?
Comment by Guts — March 13, 2007 @ 10:01 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I think the reasoning is that this would undermine the common ID/creationist argument that complexity cannot arise from simplicity.
Comment by Mesk — March 13, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Except that is not an ID argument. Making no distinction between a complex outcome preordained by natural forces because there is no other possible result within the given set of conditions and one that natural forces alone would not generate, is a more useful discerning lense through which to view causes of complex outcomes.
Comment by Bradford — March 13, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
"But the "well then, who designed the designer?" argument is, perhaps, the worst. It's a child's argument. I cannot figure out why he keeps invoking it." –Heddle
Hey, you're insulting my favorite logical argument against ID. I won't launch into at the moment because it's off-topic, but I think this "who designed the designer?" question can be stated into a sophisticated and nuanced position. (Namely my position… although I am told Dawkins says something along the same lines. Obviously his argument is derivative.) Ockham's Razor is only one component. … And, once outlined, you'd be amazed how many people try to argue that the designer must be less complex than we are in order to avoid the implications. (As is already occurring above.) And as Mesk correctly points out that this ultimately contradicts a fundamental principle of ID…(and is, on top of that, positively horrific theology)
Comment by great_ape — March 13, 2007 @ 10:21 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
One commenter suggested that.
You and Mesk are simply wrong.
Comment by Bradford — March 13, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
March 13th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
"You and Mesk are simply wrong." –Bradford
If you accept the premise that no complex information increase can occur via natural nonintelligent forces–let's put aside for the moment the issue of defining just what the complex information is–then the designer has to be more complex the the item in question.
This is known by deduction from the premises. It also follows that one of the following possibilities must be true (a) the designer is an eternal and complex entity that needs no further explanation or source or (b) the designer was designed by a still more complex being. In the event of (b) you just continue up the chain until you hit an eternal being somewhere along the way or else you've just passed the buck on explanation. There can be no other source for the complexity than complexity.
Note that these are not simply pie-in-the-sky fanciful ideas about the properties of unseen and unknowable designers. They are direct deductions from the working ID premise, and they are immediately and necessarily entailed. So if you're the sensible sort, you'll choose option (a) and cut right to the chase. And I suppose we could allow option (a) to include the possibility of multiple eternal designers, but that just isn't aesthetically pleasing to my sensibilities so I will work under the assumption of a single entity. ID is placed in the (what I consider) odd and awkward position of claiming that:
C1) Although complexity is a rare precious thing that just doesn't arise by chance alone, it's perfectly acceptable to assume instead that it just exists (in the form of the eternal being(s)) as a de-facto component of reality.
But then if you're going to allow the complex creator entity to exist as a de-facto part of reality, then why not just go ahead and remove the middle man and let biological complexity (in some form or another) exist as a de-facto component of reality. Give that it some thought before reaching for the rotten tomatoes.
Now I like option (a), personally, but as a scientist, it's just about last on the list of hypotheses to invoke for explaining biological complexity or *anything* in the observable universe for that matter. We need to exclude every possible naturalistic/mechanistic explanation before you invoke the big ECB (eternal complex being) as an explanation. (If we hadn't taken that attitude, where'd we be now?) And I've seen enough direct evidence of microevolution to know that some pretty remarkable things are possible via RM+NS. So, in my opinion, we are nowhere near the point where we can definitely exclude evolution as an explanation for biological complexity. That is ultimately what ID –at least in its popular incarnations–claims: non-intelligent explanations can be definitely ruled out as accounting for bio-complexity. But how can such an incredibly bold claim be made when we're only just scratching the surface of discovering the nature of nature?
Comment by great_ape — March 13, 2007 @ 11:47 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I disagree with several premises in your discussion:
1. It doesn't necessarily follow that the designers have to be more complex than the design. It could be that some bizarre form of simpler life evolved outside of our universe and designed it, or some other form of life as we don't know it can arise simply and design us. The core argument from ID is simply (from my perspective) the ability to see for future usefulness. According to IDers, this is what the evidence demands, a seeing watchmaker. Although, the latter suggestion undercuts the argument from fine-tuning.
2. More complex explanations can be correct.
3. Many features of life (and evolution itself) do not seem to be amenable to RM&NS. And in speaking of the fine tuning argument, they do not seem to be the result of the probabilistic resources of an eternal cyclic universe or a multi-verse, the universe is finite.
Comment by Guts — March 14, 2007 @ 12:00 am
March 14th, 2007 at 12:45 am
"It could be that some bizarre form of simpler life evolved outside of our universe and designed it, or some other form of life as we don't know it can arise simply and design us." –Guts
This, in my mind, contradicts the much-touted ID notion that what is complex can not evolve from what is simple. (Maybe this premise is more from Dembski-ID than from MikeGeneID, I won't know until I read MikeGene's book) If that is the case, then why preclude evolution?. I do, however, like the twist you offer that, outside our universe, things might be different and allow evolution of complexity from simplicity or there may be alternate forms of life for which this is possible. At least this opens a logical loophole for you.
2. More complex explanations can be correct.
I never said they couldn't. In general, however, they are inferior to simpler explanations and those should be excluded first.
3. Many features of life (and evolution itself) do not seem to be amenable to RM&NS.
Well, that's a very strong statement. Clearly the scientific community does not believe it to be true. As I indicated above, it's still far to soon to say what RM+NS can not do in my opinion. We're discovering more all the time. It would take tremendous evidence to leapfrog over naturalistic explanations and invoke the eternal complex being (or trans-universally evolved hyper-reality designers…) as the hypothesis of choice over evolution.
Comment by great_ape — March 14, 2007 @ 12:45 am
March 14th, 2007 at 1:10 am
Mesk I can see why you would infer this but because the ID position is that specified complexity is a marker of intelligence. Dawkins takes that and goes on to argue against Gods existence ( actually he says he has scientifically proved the non existence of God).
However does that neccessarily follow for a non material entity? That is does a non material intelligent agent need to be complex in order to be intelligent? For sure machines, books, etc, etc are complex but they need to be after all we inhabit a material universe. These machines are produced by intelligent agents but there are some who would argue that our intelligence is not just nuerons firing off in brain matter.That even our own intelligence may be in fact immaterial. You know mind over matter.
I think a distinction can be made between the artifacts that are markers of inelligent agency and the intelligence itself. One may be complex the other ( intelligence) simple. I dont personally see much force in Dawkins argument.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — March 14, 2007 @ 1:10 am
March 14th, 2007 at 1:12 am
I am still unable to find this edit button or feature that supposedly exists. The above sentence shouldread as follows
Mesk I can see why you would infer this because the ID position is that specified complexity is a marker of intelligence.
Comment by Vividbleau — March 14, 2007 @ 1:12 am
March 14th, 2007 at 1:15 am
GA:
It is my understanding that several in the scientific community have described systems that are not amenable to RM&NS alone, Behe, Weinreich, R.A. Watson, Eric Davidson, and others come to mind. I don't think the dichotomy is necessarily between design and evolution, if these systems arise through more complex, large, and/or biased/non-random changes, then that opens the possibility that evolution itself was designed. I admit though that my thinking is fuzzy as to the MG/K hypothesis.
Comment by Guts — March 14, 2007 @ 1:15 am
March 14th, 2007 at 3:00 am
As far as ID (qua IC/SC=ID) goes, Dawkin's argument is clearly wrong because it is clearly too powerful - if it were true that design inferences were to be abandoned because designers are too complex then we could never infer that anything was designed. Clearly we know that some things are designed, ergo we can infer design, ergo we are not to abandon design inferences because designers are complicated.
As far as theology goes, I suspect the word 'complicated' with reference to God is vacuous; in the sense of 'specified complexity' or 'irreducable complexity' we refer to the relationship between component parts that make up a whole. Theology, at least the theology of Aquinas and orthodox Christianity, would reject the idea of 'component parts' of God.
Comment by BenK — March 14, 2007 @ 3:00 am
March 14th, 2007 at 3:04 am
GreatApe: "It would take tremendous evidence to leapfrog over naturalistic explanations and invoke the eternal complex being (or trans-universally evolved hyper-reality designers"¦) as the hypothesis of choice over evolution."
I see things that designers have designed all the time. It is established beyond reasonable doubt that intelligent agents can produce IC/SC. If it cannot be shown that unintelligent processes can produce IC/SC, then it's reasonable to attribute IC/SC to intelligent agency.
This seems like a straightforward inferential argument to me: All observed A comes from B, therefore this A probably comes from B. I don't see why a further 'tremendous evidence' is required to believe this.
Comment by BenK — March 14, 2007 @ 3:04 am
March 14th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Intelligence is not the artifact.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — March 14, 2007 @ 3:15 am
March 14th, 2007 at 6:01 am
Often at these junctures an example of crystal structures is presented as evidence. If that is what you had in mind then we are not in disagreement as to the capacity of natural forces. As to RM+NS you need to account for causality leading to a functional, replicating genome before you can make claims about the sufficiency of NF.
I've seen some remarkable things as well but the selection I have in mind pertains to already existing organisms. Irrelevant when design is imputed at point of origin. It is an incredibly bold claim to infer that organisms arose as a consequence of random chemical reactions. What was selected? How was a path blazed from organic chemicals to an encoding genome replete with mechanisms allowing for its expression? Is there a response that does not entail us having to place our faith in unknown causes and unidentified mechanisms?
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 6:01 am
March 14th, 2007 at 6:11 am
BenK wrote:
What could be more complicated than an infinite regress chain of causes or more vacuous than an uncaused phenomenon?
There is no need to abandon tried and true applications of logic and reason for fear a God inference lies somewhere in a chain of causes.
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 6:11 am
March 14th, 2007 at 6:14 am
Vivid:
Click on 'Edit This' next to the time and date. It is there for thirty minutes after posting.
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 6:14 am
March 14th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Erm, yes it is. It may not be your argument, and it may not be a good argument, but it's extremely common on ID forums, and implicitly or explicitly underlies several common ID arguments. Which was my point.
Comment by Mesk — March 14, 2007 @ 6:36 am
March 14th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Mesk, you need to be more specific than this. IDers do not contend that complexity cannot arise. You can point to examples outside the realm of biology that are not in dispute. If you have in mind a functional genome and "simplicity" is random chemical reactions in a prebiotic earth environment, then I would concur that IDers would argue against this.
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 6:42 am
March 14th, 2007 at 8:54 am
There is a subtle shift in Crawley's argument that you missed, Mike. First you write (emphasis mine):
So Dawkins and Crawley agree that "Where did God come from?" is an objection that can be used whenever someone uses God to explain something about the world.
What Crawley has done (if you are quoting correctly) is to equate "using God to explain something about the world" with "evidence for the existence of God". Those two things aren't even remotely equivalent. Crawley makes the invalid conclusion that "Where did God come from?" is a valid objection to both types of problems, when it in fact Dawkins only applied it to the first.
What Dawkins is pointing out, and rightly so, is that using a God to explain some phenomenon without first establishing the existence of said God is folly. I would imagine that answering "Where did God come from?" would actually be one of the strongest bits of evidence that would convince a skeptic like Dawkins.
In your zeal to tear down Richard Dawkins, you've missed a rather trivial case of shifting goalposts by William Crawley.
Comment by K Klein — March 14, 2007 @ 8:54 am
March 14th, 2007 at 9:24 am
No it wouldn't because the reasoning is flawed. Whenever you look for an ultimate/final cause you have to assume that one exists. X can't be an ultimate explanation if something external to X further elucidates X. If you deny that an ultimate explanation exists then you have to accept an actual infinite…. in which sets and proper subsets can have a one-to-one correspondence - with as little sense as that would actually make in the real world.
Comment by Doug — March 14, 2007 @ 9:24 am
March 14th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Doug is right. Insistence on an answer to the where did God come from question ignores the fact that a first cause eliminates a major philosophical conundrum of infinite regress or a causal chain that stops with an appeal to ignorance i.e. we'll discover the answer at some future point in time. Pick your poison because there are some things we just cannot know.
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 9:45 am
March 14th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Doug is wrong because "God" and "the ultimate cause" aren't necessarily the same thing. Maybe our "God" is just a lonely alien from the Andromeda galaxy.
For people who are so insistent that the Designer != God, this seems a be a rather fundamental mistake.
Comment by K Klein — March 14, 2007 @ 10:24 am
March 14th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Klein,
I was only showing that if one assumes an ultimate explanation they have to accept that nothing further to that ultimate explanation can further explain that ultimate explanation.
Handy trick you have there of reading so much into someone's post.
Also Klein,
Where are you on providing that evidence that Behe's IC structures have all failed (to use your words)?
Comment by Doug — March 14, 2007 @ 10:30 am
March 14th, 2007 at 10:34 am
You're just playing with definitions. Is this supposed to be a serious argument against God or Designer?
If one believes that there is a Designer of the universe…. and if they call this God… or if they believe in God and believe He is the Designer of the universe what's the difference?
Also, on this board you probably will find many who believe that there might be a designer but that the designer is not the God of Christianity. Or atleast that the inference that there is a designer doesn't not necessarily lead (off of that evidence) that the designer is God.
More like a fundamental misunderstanding on your part.
BTW,
sorry about the confusion earlier Klein. I was under the impression that you were someone else that I had been chatting with on another forum.
Comment by Doug — March 14, 2007 @ 10:34 am
March 14th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Vivid's tried to interject the difference between cause (a designer or a natural process) and artifact (that which is designed). And those in agreement with Dawkins have neglected to quantify what materialistic limitations they are arbitrarily assigning to this proposed final cause.
Or, consider consciousness. It is hypothesized by the staunchest materialists to be an "emergent property" of the complexity of the processes and structures underlying its expression. But if what emerges is qualitative, it is not itself any material 'thing' [quantity]. Where then is its supposed material complexity?
Where are the qualitative pieces-parts (are there such things)? It is not matter, and cannot be reduced to matter. It's something MORE than the physical substrate, a qualitative attribute.
So it seems to me that unless the materialists can effectively reduce qualitative properties *as* material things, the whole material complexity argument goes right on out the window.
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 11:14 am
March 14th, 2007 at 11:24 am
From Mike Gene:
Comment by Jack — March 14, 2007 @ 11:24 am
March 14th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I wrote something on an earlier post that I think is relevant here:
The idea that something has always existed (or is uncreated) in theology is referred to as aseity or self-existence. It's something that theologians have long attributed to God. So when Richard Dawkins, or anyone else, asks where did God come from (or who created God) he is really asking where the always existing (or eternally existing) something come from? Obviously that is a ridiculous question to ask because answer already exists in the very concept he is questioning. It's a tautology: the always existing something has always existed.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — March 14, 2007 @ 11:27 am
March 14th, 2007 at 11:33 am
From Dembski:
Comment by Jack — March 14, 2007 @ 11:33 am
March 14th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Complexity is something we attribute to things. Comparing the complexity of one type of thing to another type of thing requires that the standards of complexity be reasonably similar.
It is not clear to me that the complexity of an ability is comparable to the complexity of a physical object.
Comment by bipod — March 14, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Dawkins asks, by way of objection to invoking God as an explanatorily ultimate cause, the age-old 'Who made God/Where did God come from?/Who designed God?' question.
But we could ask the same type of question about anything that is invoked as an explanatorily ultimate cause. Matter. Stuff. The Laws of Nature. The Vacuum. The Forms. The Infinite Turtle-Pile. Take your pick. And it's obvious that this question would be on its own a completely vacuous argumentative ploy.
So other assumptions must be at work.
Let me suggest two: a concern for ontological economy, and an aesthetic preference that whatever is explanatorily/causally ultimate should be not too complex, and in fact preferably as beautifully simple as possible so as to be maximally pleasing and satisfying to our understanding.
This is why the Turtle-Pile isn't that popular, and also why, in my opinion, Dawkins wants to rule out excessively complex ultimate causes, such as he regards God as being. But of course, what Dawkins does is to perform his intellectual aesthetics exclusively from behind blinkers that rule out of sight anything that isn't consonant with materialism. But of course other, non-materialist exercizes in intellectual aesthetics are quite conceivable. I just think he and his ilk aren't attuned to the non-materialist possibilities here merely because they couldn't be studied by the standard operating procedures of the physical sciences. In other words, it's simply his dogmatic materialism, not reason as such, that's filtering out irreducibly mind-like or any other non-material suitably aesthetic possibilities from being included as candidates for explanatory/causal ultimacy in Dawkins' thought processes.
But moving on from that quirk of his, I think we can make broader remarks on the ontological economy and ontological aesthetics dimensions of this issue.
On the first point, it is apparent that this bowing to Ockham has been dealt a bit of a blow recently by the need to invoke vast numbers of additional real universes to cope with the fine-tuning evidence. And they're not observable in accordance with the usual scientific instrumentation.
On the second, how can a non-mind/non-design perspective account for the beautiful simplicity of the laws governing our universe as being simply an observation selection effect? One who argued for this would have to be assuming that conscious observation could only arise in a universe with beautifully simple laws for ordering the entities of that universe. But this assumption is a heck of a big one. Why can't an inelegant set of laws, or at least a set less elegant than the one that governs ours, also give rise to observers?
But theism provides a non ad-hoc explanation. God has usually been conceived as the ground not only of the created world, but as desiring and intending its beautiful ordering. Non-mind/non-design perspectives seem to offer no inherent or natural causal force within them either concerned with or tending to favor simpler laws, more elegant organizing principles, more aesthetically pleasing mathematical structure, etc. There are lots of ways to build a house. But if houses built themselves, why would we expect any of them to turn out to be particularly beautiful? We only expect an especially beautiful house to result from a builder with a concern for beauty. Or at least if we found such a house, we'd consider it more likely to have come to be that way because whatever built it had a suitable aesthetic concern or desire, than that it just happened to turn out beautiful by sheer good fortune.
A good discussion of this can be found at this link, especially in part 6 about 'Multiverses, Design, and the Beauty of the Laws of Nature', though the whole piece is well worth a read.
http://home.messiah.edu/~rcoll...
Comment by stunney — March 14, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
bipod:
Precisely! How do materialists translate physical [material] complexity to immaterial, non-physical attributes? There surely needs to be a definition and a process cited here.
Stunney:
Um… but Dawkins is completely wrong about the Turtle-Pile. As a matter of fact, high energy physics is all about the Turtle-Pile as it pertains to those most fundamental of fundamentals - mass and gravity. For mass, it really is turtles all the way down! That's why you'll see some rather imaginative (but so far unconfirmed) alternatives out there to explain WHY it's turtles all the way down.
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
They are. Match up the ultimate cause with properties of God and you have the logical connection.
This is an example of stupid word games typical of EA arguments. Maybe God is a speck of dust on your jacket.:roll:
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 1:55 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Are you referring to the Atoms -> Baryons -> Quarks -> Preons / Strings heirarchies?
Like what for instance? (sounds fascinating!)
Comment by mcromer — March 14, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Bradford:
I think it's the title they object to. "God" comes attached to all the myriad sociopolitical formalizations these people reject out of hand. So while they may concede the metaphysical necessity of a first and/or final cause, they don't want it conflated with anybody's ideas of deity.
That humans might quite naturally consider through their inherent cognitive processes that a telic, creating first/final cause must be a agent who qualifies for the title of deity doesn't seem to matter to people who reject the idea that there is any greater cause or influence in all of reality than themselves.
You'll see this illustrated most graphically in the "Retrocausality" thread.
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
mcromer:
Not the hierarchies in particular, but the increasing mass of subatomic particles (most noticeable in fermions and associated bosons, or force-transfer particles). The more energy input to produce them, the greater their mass. "All the way down." Often many orders of magnitude above the mass of regular particles of matter (protons, neutrons, etc.) that they are supposedly pieces-parts of.
I think it's all rather fascinating, in a "you guys are so totally full of it" sort of way. Sometimes the most obvious answers are the ones that most easily escape attention.
I was referring to the Higgs field/particles, a.k.a. "God Particle" (no, I didn't name it that). In order to factor what's real about gravity without appeals to dimensions we can never hope to measure, we've got to account for mass - that property of matter upon which gravity acts. If the pieces-parts of matter particles are 'heavier' than the particles they were blasted from, then this throws gravity (and its actions) way, way off!
Now, a reasonable person might suspect that the energy used to blast the particles to smithereens gets translated into mass for the sub-particles that are produced. That's apparently too obvious for dedicated high energy atom-smashers to notice, probably because there isn't a fundamental particle that gifts protons, neutrons and such WITH mass. Until Higgs, that is.
Higgs is a boson, or force exchange particle. According to the model that includes Higgs, it should have shown up when our atom-smashing energy levels reached ~.8 TeV. We're now well past that (double and soon half again) but Wiggly Higgly still has not shown. MIA, and this results in what they call "Unitary Crisis" in fundamental physics. Everybody seems quite comfortable to add dimensions to gravity (usually via tunneling past singularities in the equations), but it has to act on something that's real about actual fundamental matter particles.
The something proposed is Higgs. The exchange particles (at their particular energy level, thus mass quotient) are imparted to matter particles by virtue of their movement through a Planck-level geometrical lattice of spacetime (momentum, mostly - which ends up basically as inertia in a relativistic universe). This lattice is the "Higgs Field." Or, for those who are confused, a fifth force/dimension.
They're not yet ready to give up on ol' Wiggly Higgly, and experiments this summer at CERN will hopefully establish or falsify the theoretics. As it now stands, however, we are all the way down to quark-gluon plasma and mini-black holes from heavy ion collisions, and there is no Higgs. "Everybody" expects a whole new re-unifying theoretic soon. For now, they're still stuck with turtles. All the way down.
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
The only property "God" needs to have in relation to the Crawley/Dawkins conversation is the ability to design some feature of the natural world. Where does that say anything about first causes?
You may extrapolate if you like, but such an extrapolation is not supported by any evidence.
Comment by K Klein — March 14, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Thanks Joy.
I actually pulled up Wikipedia this afternoon and tried to remember / figure out all the particle mess again.
To me, it looks like these apparent "particles" are much more just mathematical patterns of interacting activity, not something "real".
Comment by mcromer — March 14, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
On the complexity issue: does simplicity generate complexity and is an information processor more simple than the program it creates?
It all depends on how you define complexity. Dawkins defined it as an arrangement of parts (which again may actually be hard to define) which act together to produce function. So, let's ask a relevant question.
Is the complexity of an information processor necessarily more complex than the program it produces? IOW: Are there necessarily more parts to an information processor than to the program it produces? Well, let's look at life. Are there more parts acting together at the information processing level (nucleotides, enzymes, and the like) than at the resulting "program" level (proteins, molecular machinery and systems, macro-molecular structures, and the further information processing structure of the brain)?
Furthermore, and here is where we need to define "parts," are there any "parts" to a "quantum field" or any field (electromagnetic or otherwise)? If not, then it is perfectly simple, yet it generates a program, nature, which consists of parts — fundamental particles — which combine to produce complexes (complexity).
Or do we say that nothing is truly complex, since the line between "part" (fundamental particle) and "field" is too blurred?
Maybe Joy's lattest post has some insight into this.
Comment by CJYman — March 14, 2007 @ 4:23 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
mcromer:
Um… you may not want to go there, Matthew. Because none of it's "real."
Or maybe you would. §;o) This is one I like to throw at metaphysical materialists whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Coming from you this is precious. Are you going to inform me on how all of Behe's instances of IC have failed? Or is your extrapolation (if you even have anything to extrapolate on) not supported by any evidence?
Comment by Doug — March 14, 2007 @ 4:32 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
On a religious note, in light of my previous post, maybe the idea of God being the source behind the "complexity" around us and being the ultimate in simplicity yet the ultimate information processor (remember that the cause of the universe, quantum "whatevers," is now viewed as an information processor) may not be as illogical as some people seem to very desparately wish it to be.
mcromer:
Excellent point, as this would clear up the problem with defining parts — they are "much more mathematical patterns of interacting [fields], not something 'real.'"
And there you have it. Complexity arises from part and parts from "non-parts" or, in accordance with Dawkin's deffinition of complexity as a measurement of parts, perfect simplicity. Thus, our universe arises from an information processor of perfect simplicity.
Comment by CJYman — March 14, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
CJYman:
Probably not. While Wiggly Higgly (the "God Particle" gifting mass to matter) is supposed to have a mass in the high GeV range (thus far not in evidence), the graviton is purported to be entirely mass-less.
Massless extremals operate via a different mechanism from eterna-bonding (like quarks and gluons prior to universal hadronization) altogether - vector alignment. That is entirely a field phenomenon, non-local (involving the exterior milieu) to any hypothesized fundamental particle action.
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Hold on, I've got more.
… as an extension of my last post …
-If God = the intelligent eternal uncaused cause of the universe
-if we define intelligence as the ability to process information
-if we assume that the cause of our universe is eternal (in order to avoid the good ol' Pile o' Turtles)
-then the universe is a result of … guess Who … Yours Truly … God.
Comment by CJYman — March 14, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Joy,
I do not have any formal education in particle physics, however I do enjoy the occasional read. I did my highschool english research essay on the search for the fundamental particle, and at the time I read quite a bit about the "God Particle," but that was a while back and the extent of my education on such matters. I do remember some terms and concepts, but other than that please bear with me.
Joy:
What you're saying is that the Higgs Boson, if discovered, would demolish the idea of fields since it has actual mass at a location, whereas the graviton, if discovered, since it operates as a field (according to vector alignment) would obviously place a field as fundamental to particles. Correct?
Also, are you saying that quarks and gluons only operated according to vector alignment (fields) before protons and neutrons existed, since quarks do not exist on their own any more, and therefore there is no example of actual "field particles" to date?
However, if this is the case, since hadron have mass, yet are the result of quarks (field particles), even if the "God Particle" were discovered, wouldn't it also be the result of field (non-local) particles?
Also, haven't quarks been recently smashed from their corresponding hadron and seen to operate as a field within a certain collider? I'm pretty sure I just read about this not too long ago.
Aren't quarks on the same "level" as the Higgs Boson, which if discovered would then show mass and field operating at the same level. If not, and "Wiggly Higgly" is fundamental to fields, then how does local mass create non-local field. Would quarks then have to have a more fundamental "massive" structure to them, at the same level as the Higgs Boson?
Comment by CJYman — March 14, 2007 @ 5:27 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
CJYman:
Hmmm… It seems to me that while it's always a good use of intellect to try and reconcile one's spiritual views (understandings, interpretations) to whatever the current scientific consensus may be, it's probably not a good idea to start with spiritual views and try to impose them on provisional scientific consensus.
At various times in the history of science, science has been demonstrated by later knowledge and technology to be completely wrong about one phenomenon or several. And while either of a postulated pair of scientific explanations for observations may be reconcilable to religious beliefs (Steady State and Big Bang, for instance), it's entirely possible neither is correct and the next theory will be something else entirely.
Science is an entirely human-designed collective endeavor to quantify what we can quantify of physical phenomena and/or processes, for the practical purpose of control of said phenomena and/or processes. All scientific knowledge is held provisional.
Science wasn't really designed to discover and quantify gods/God or anything that could be classified as first/final cause. If it could do so it probably wouldn't hesitate to do so, but so far we haven't even come close. That's okay for something designed to be provisional.
So I don't look to science to confirm or deny any ultimate spiritual concepts or even get past the metaphysical divide on causation. Whenever I see a scientist extrapolating from current evidence to such things, I know they're beyond their depth and level of expertise. IOW, they're doing just what you have done. Metaphysics is not the same thing as physics, and it's foolish (and psychologically dangerous) to put too much absolute truth-value on any provisional theoretic of science.
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Joy,
I agree completely.
… now on to more pressing matters … the Higgs
Comment by CJYman — March 14, 2007 @ 5:57 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Joy,
Whad'ya know, upon actually thinking the matter through
I am beginning to have doubts as to how deeply I agree with you, because of the overall picture of the direction that science has moved since its inseption. It has had it stock market type ups and downs, however if it is any description of reality (note I didn't use "physical" reality, since "physical" is hard to define) then it should end up constantly creeping closer to either the materialistic or anti-materialistic viewpoint, especially when delving into the scientific questions: "what causes information processing systems," and "what causes consciousness" since these two things appear, albeit provisionally, to be fundamental to natural law as produced by our universe.
Example: the Big Bang may be replaced with something else in the future which does not need a starting point, which may then be replaced with the Big Bang, ad infinitum, however that doesn't seem to be the picture which the history of science unfolds for us. It seem to unfold an overall picture of enrichment toward a goal, rather than mere cycle of destruction and replacement of theories. Consider, Newtonian physics morphing into Einsteinian physics.
But yah, overall, I do agree that we don't place absolute trust in science.
We should place absolute trust in the Creator of the ability to use logical scientific inference. (hint, hint … wink, wink):wink:
Comment by CJYman — March 14, 2007 @ 6:14 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
They are. Match up the ultimate cause with properties of God and you have the logical connection.
Definitions of God, particularly in cultures dominated by Judeo-Christian concepts, entail effects brought about by an eternal, all-powerful God. That's the begining of a causal chain. There is an alternative. An endless chain of causes and effects necessitated by the absence of an initial cause. When you debunk the concept of God by rhetorically asking who created God you point to infinite regress causal chain. As I said before, pick your poison.
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
They are. Match up the ultimate cause with properties of God and you have the logical connection.
.
Exactly. But if that is their concern then instead of redefining God to mean whatever it is they wish it to mean, it would be better to cite their sociopolitical concerns outright and then attempt to delink them from values they associate with God. Straight paths to objectives are preferable.
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
To Bradford, and whomever may be responding to him:
I have "proven" God about six posts up using the method that Bradford suggests, and now Joy and I are hashing out the idea of "proving" God through science and logic.
Comment by CJYman — March 14, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Bingo!
Dawkin's fallacy is one of simple equivocation. This time on the word "complexity". He might as well say, in keeping with his usual level of charitable discourse, that it is no wonder that Christians are stupid because God is so simple. It would display just the same level of understanding of basic metaphysical terms.
Dawkins is walking in the footsteps of another great bungler of theistic arguments, Bertrand Russel. Before Dawkins ever asked "who designed the designer", Bertrand Russel was asking "who caused God" In his book, "Why I am not a Christian", Russel paraphrased the arguments for the existence of God as arguing that "everything has a cause", to which Russel logically retorted, "then what caused God?" Isn't that convenient?
Apparently, among Ivory Tower atheist academics, its a virtue of rationality to be completely ignorant of the real arguments of one's opponents.
Comment by Brian Killian — March 14, 2007 @ 6:39 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
CJYman:
Great questions through the post! Unfortunately, I'm just barely keeping up with developments through the pre-print NL servers and science press. No big atom smashers in my neck of the woods (thank God). Those guys are really soul-less robots, if the Brookhaven strangelet controversy is something to judge by!
The heavy ion experiments at several colliders have produced (according to after-the-fact interpretation from detector tracks) quark-gluon plasmas. As well as possible mini-holes. The heavy ion of choice is gold, basically all protons after neutrons have been split off. They now get very, very close to the speed of light in the toruses, and can keep those babies traveling fast forever if they can keep the electricity on.
Heavy ions produce matter-specific substrates, so it is odd emissions from these that let them look for bosons like Higgs. Nobody I've ever heard about expects to ever see a graviton. Higgs, however, would go a long way toward establishing that gravitons exist, and that is seen to be good enough, FAPP [For All Practical Purposes]. And if it's entirely likely that gravitons exist (per theory), then it's also entirely likely that instantons (a pseudoparticle) exist - to provide locality to what is looking a lot like non-local action.
Now, THAT would be a real kick in the head! It's all just interacting fields, all extended infinitely, and unless we take a measurement, they're all non-local. The universe itself may take measurements (Penrose's Orch-OR), or perhaps reality doesn't require anything objectively 'real' (many worlds). Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Oh, it's more morph. Into something resembling a mobius universe, if Hawking is to be credited. Finite yet eternal. Hmmm… Sometimes I think somebody got 2+2=5 somewhere way back on the first blackboard, and nobody's noticed. Everything we think we know could be wrong.
I'm a scientific iconoclast. I actually like it when cherished theories get turned on their heads completely. Just a personality quirk, I'm sure… §;o)
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Joy, my brain hurts, and its your fault!:roll:
I'm out for the night.
… later …
Comment by CJYman — March 14, 2007 @ 6:58 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Perhaps somebody could explain just what is wrong with this argument, other than that a child could make it?
If the answer is, the Designer just happened (or always existed) without being designed himself, then why is that any less miraculous than the universe just happening without a designer at all?
Forgive me for my child-like query, it would be nice to get a straight answer to this simple question.
Comment by mtraven — March 14, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
mtraven:
Because a spontaneous universe could not sustain its existence (to produce intelligent agents such as ourselves who wonder about such mysteries) without an infinite series of spontaneous events equally as improbable as the first. If infinite regress is what you're trying to avoid, infinite progress isn't a good way to do it.
As for an "uncaused cause," that's just basic metaphysics. First/final cause. Might as well skip to the end (or beginning)… or maybe they're the same thing. §;o)
Comment by Joy — March 14, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Joy wrote:
If the continued existence of a spontaneous universe must depend on an infinite series of spontaneous events, then the same is true of the continued existence of the Designer.
Comment by keiths — March 14, 2007 @ 9:09 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Take anything you like, and designate it as having the property of being the explanatorily ultimate thing.
Given the designation, it betrays misunderstanding of the designated property to think that one can sensibly ask what it explains it, since it is what one has just designated as the explanatorily ultimate thing.
A materialist takes matter to be explanatorily ultimate. Given that I know that a materialist takes matter to be explanatorily ultimate, it would be silly for me to keep asking a materialist, "Yeah, but what explains matter???"
Now, you might think that one can simply appeal to Ockham's Razor at this point, but this runs into a problem not with the mere existence of the world we observe, but with the ordered character of what we observe. I'll explain.
The Ockham's Razor principle says, 'Don't multiply entities beyond necessity.' Ok, to explain the perceived order of the universe, the proponents of a multiverse posit trillions upon trillions of additional entities—additional universes, or additional universe-regions (beyond the limits of what we observe). Theists, posit one additional entity. So prima facie theism is more ontologically economical.
Notice that both sides see the positing of something beyond what we observe as being necessary to explain the order inherent in what we do observe.
Theists hold that because that order is intrinsically intelligible to mathematical reason, and because mathematical reason is essentially an attribute of rational mind, inference to an ultimately mind-like reality is more probable than either a materialist or Platonist alternative. But notice that all three worldviews posit something invisible and infinite to explain order:
1) God
or
2) A Platonic Mathematical Realm (which must contain at least as infinite a number of abstract entities as the mathematics responsible for the truth of the ultimate equations or laws itself contains)
or
3) A Realm of Universes or Universe-Regions with no fixed or determinable upper limit on their number
As between these three alternatives, Ockham's Razor either cannot by itself decide since there are serious countability issues with all three, or else favors theism. (Aquinas has technical reasons to do with God not belonging to a genus or species and with God's existence being identical with God's essence, for not regarding God as a being or an entity, and therefore not being strictly speaking a countable type of reality.)
My argument in this respect in purely defensive rather than positive; that is, my argument has been not to rely on Ockham's Razor, but simply to reject the claim that it clearly favors the non-theistic alternatives. Because it does not!
In other words, if you're going to appeal to Ockham, there's no reason to think that theism does badly in that regard. On the contrary. But my argument actually doesn't rely on it, it simply says all three worldviews are either on a par, Ockham-wise, or, if anything, theism is better, Ockham-wise.
Theism does a better job in my view because it's better suited to account also for the phenomena of consciousness, rationality, morality, aesthetics, and religious experience. A materialist multiverse can't account for any of that if materialism in the philosophy of mind is false. I am persuaded that it is false for reasons advanced by the likes of Saul Kripke and David Chalmers . And I prefer theism to Platonism since I don't think there's any good Platonist theory of causation, whereas we know that there are causally active minds. For example, my mind decided to type this, and this mental decision caused my physically typing it.
So theism, as an abductive inference , that is, as an inference to a transcendent Mind as being on balance the best explanation for cosmic order (as well the existence of consciousness, reason, morality, aesthetic value, religious experience and spirituality, etc), strikes me as at least as, indeed as more plausible than either a mysterious Platonic realm of impersonal mathematical laws and equations, or the apotheosis of meaningless, purposeless ontological extravagance represented by the Multiverse.
But notice that all three notions—God, the Platonic Realm, and the Multiverse"”are notions of an unobservable infinite.
Comment by stunney — March 14, 2007 @ 11:00 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Not if the designer has the properties attributed to God. We know the universe lacks such qualities.
Comment by Bradford — March 14, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Logically a finite contingent event just happenning out of nothing is a logical impossibility. Scientific evidence appers to point to the universe as a finite and contingent event. On the other hand the existence of an infinite non contingent entity is not illogical. An infinite non contingent entity does not just happen it just is. It is a neccessay existence.
If something exists something must always have existed ( neccessary existence). So what is it? Science seems to be gravitating towards an infinite existence of infinite universes. Those that do so understand that somethng cannot come from nothing.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — March 14, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
March 14th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
One problem here is the notion of 'continued existence'. This could mean, and prima facie does mean 'existence that is continued through time'.
But if the Designer is the God of classical theism, then its existence is not continued through time, but is timeless or transcends temporal categories of existence.
Relatedly, the existence of the Universe can be plausibly viewed as a chain of causally interrelated events. But the existence of personal beings is much less plausibly viewed as such a chain. There have been many causally interrelated events in my life. But the being I am, and my personal identity is plausibly viewed as a reality that persists or endures through all those events, as one and the same irreducible reality. This is less clearly the case with the Universe, especially since modern inflationary cosmology places different events within the Universe so far apart that for evermore they are essentially causally disconnected from one another. No such essential disconnectedness appears to affect the memories of a single person.
And these disanalogies seem even stronger in the case of a divine personal being.
Comment by stunney — March 14, 2007 @ 11:43 pm
March 15th, 2007 at 12:13 am
mtraven
In addition to my first answer to your question, you might also like to think about what I wrote earlier in this thread in response to the 'Dawkins Challenge'.
Comment by stunney — March 15, 2007 @ 12:13 am
March 15th, 2007 at 12:56 am
I earlier wrote:
The explanandum is order in the physical world, and what physics tells us is that this order is amenable to rational mathematical understanding in a profound and systematic way. It strikes me as unlikely in the extreme that this could be so merely as a result of chance or of some other ultimately impersonal, mindless brute fact about the world.
I've previously argued on this blog that order must be primitive, at some final level of explanatory analysis, on any plausible account, theist or non-theist. But I think it is literally unreasonable to expect the order of the world to be mathematically intelligible merely as a materialistically conceived brute fact about it, because the connections between order and mathematics, and between mathematics and mind, run too deep for that.
The existence of mathematical reason in minds existing now capable of understanding the mathematical order inherent in the early universe is very suspicious, as Wigner famously noted. Primitive order that just happens to be amenable to mathematical reason in minds now would be the brute fact that Dawkins et al are asking theists to swallow as being 'simpler' than eternal math-comprehending creative mind as brute fact. But it is far from obvious that Dawkins et al must be right about this. My intuition tells me that it's more likely that the order-math-mind nexus is far more simply accounted for by theism. It's easier to see why it would all tie together, given the truth of theism than it would given atheistic materialism.
I guess I'm saying, show me how we get rationally intelligible order and value and religious experience etc in a purely material world, and show me how this story is more epistemically plausible at the moment than theism as an elegant and parsimonious account for it overall.
Comment by stunney — March 15, 2007 @ 12:56 am
March 15th, 2007 at 1:49 am
stunney, thanks for that very clear and non-inflammatory reply.
So. theists and non-theists just have radically different assumptions about what is foundational — mind or "matter". As you say, perhaps there is no way to choose between them. I made some comments in a very similar vein a few weeks ago here.
But — materialism has an account of how mind can arise from non-mind, and has the evidence from geology and biology to support it. That suggests (doesn't prove) that matter can be prior to mind. If the universe started with mind, why did it take 4.5 billion years for the human mind to emerge from a seemingly mindless earth?
Comment by mtraven — March 15, 2007 @ 1:49 am
March 15th, 2007 at 3:32 am
K Klein,
Well, then you've just completely undercut any possibility of Dawkins' reasoning in this case being rational. Do you suppose he accepts the "Big Bang" as the explanation of the "origin" of the Universe? If so, why does he accept the seeming evidence for the "Big Bang" as evidence for the "Big Bang", when there is as yet no explanation for where the "Big Bang" came from, what "preceded" it?
(By the way, "Doug" is not me, and I am not "Doug". We are two separate people, just so happening to share the same wonderful full first name.)
Comment by Douglas — March 15, 2007 @ 3:32 am
March 15th, 2007 at 8:27 am
The primary difference between the cosmological fine-tuning argument that Dawkins was addressing and Big Bang Theory is that the former requires the existence of an extremely complex intelligent agent (aka "God") and latter does not. Thus the CFT argument ultimately just begs the question.
A second difference is that CFT attempts to address the ultimate cause of the universe whereas BBT only attempts to describe its formation.
Comment by K Klein — March 15, 2007 @ 8:27 am
March 15th, 2007 at 8:55 am
keiths:
? Not sure what you're saying here. An entity capable of designing a universe by an act of will out of nothing would logically be capable of sustaining said universe. The universe being something less-than the transcendent creator would also suggest that entity is not subject to the time it takes to evolve things IN the universe. So it would be silly to say he/she/it/they must have grown up and died of old age by now, if the universe still exists (and is less-than the transcendent creator).
I see that Occam's sharp razor has been brought up. I apply it to the many worlds/multiverse magical poof thinking that supposed "rationalists" can't manage to figure out is so ridiculously irrational. So with that nonsensical appeal out of the way, we're left with just the two options - a deliberate fine-tuned creation and an accidental poof of pure unnatural magic (unnatural because before there was a universe with natural laws, whatever accidental thing occurred to poof it into existence is outside that which was poofed - nature).
The willful creation does not need constant maintenance because the laws are fine-tuned to govern its evolution. But the creating agent could intervene if she/he/it/they wanted to. The accidental creation requires an infinite series of further accidental events for everything that *is* within that universe. Including its laws.
Comment by Joy — March 15, 2007 @ 8:55 am
March 15th, 2007 at 9:16 am
K Klein:
You have asserted that a first/fiinal cause must be "extremely complex." Please define the nature of this complexity, and why it is applied to an intentional creation but does not apply to cause of the Big Bang. Thanks.
Comment by Joy — March 15, 2007 @ 9:16 am
March 15th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Joy wrote:
This doesn't make sense. Once the laws are in place, they govern the future evolution of the universe, whether created or not. No infinite series of accidents is needed.
Comment by keiths — March 15, 2007 @ 9:55 am
March 15th, 2007 at 10:42 am
keiths:
And how did the laws come to be? What is the order of their appearance? How do you trace the lineage of cause and effect to each (or does claiming they're all 'accidental' render cause and effect irrelevant)? Is the existence of life also "law?" If so, why do we not see life everywhere? And if law requires matter to spontaneously generate life (hundreds of billions of further 'accidents' on just one tiny backwater planet, each sustained moment-to-moment by billions of further 'accidents'), why do we observe that life only comes from life?
The number of accidents required to explain and sustain the whole of observable reality *as* accidental is stupendous, Keith. Even more stupendous than the 1 chance in 10^10^123 that our spacetime parameters - the dimensions we inhabit, not the scarce matter that dances within it - came about by 'accident'.
Occam shreds the notion.
Comment by Joy — March 15, 2007 @ 10:42 am
March 15th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I have no idea what caused the BB, and BBT has nothing to say about its proximate cause. BBT only describes the formation of the universe after it was already created. Therefore your request to explain why something doesn't apply to the cause of the BB doesn't make sense to me since I haven't made any claims about the cause of the BB.
All I can do is compare the BBT, which is a descriptive theory governed only by the laws of physics, versus an intentional creation theory which requires the existence of a sentient entity external to the universe. Since the only other sentient entities we know of (humans) are themselves extremely complex, I feel it is a safe assumption that an entity who could create the universe must be at least as complex.
Comment by K Klein — March 15, 2007 @ 11:00 am
March 15th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Hi Klein,
But what is the hold up and how is this an argument against it?
I can restate what Marverick Philospher has said regarding Dawkins argument.
But maybe it's best just to link Maverick's argument
Comment by Doug — March 15, 2007 @ 11:13 am
March 15th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Brian Killian makes an excellent point:
Let me expand on that point. Here are a couple of quotes from first Mr. Russel followed by Mr. Dawkins:
Notice how Russel begins by arguing that everything must have a cause but then in the very next sentence argues that if anything can exist without a cause "it may just as well be the world (universe) as God." Obviously, that's a contradiction. (BTW russell was considered one of the 20th centuries leading logicians).
Now look at Dawkins; his reasoning is almost an exact parallel to Russells, except he adds the absurdity that DNA or life might be eternal. How could that be the case in a universe that is temporally finite? Remember the Big Bang? Maybe, Dawkins is an unreformed Steady Statist. Does anyone out there know?
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — March 15, 2007 @ 11:26 am
March 15th, 2007 at 11:34 am
mtraven
I think that claim is at best extremely controversial. In actual fact, I think it is straightforwardly false. Even non-theist leading philosophers of mind such as Colin McGinn and David Chalmers acknowledge quite franky that there is simply no rationally defensible theory of consciousness. McGinn's view, indeed, known as the 'New Mysterianism', is that there cannot be such a theory. At any rate there has simply been no resolution to what Chalmers called the 'Hard Problem of Consciousness'.
I'm not sure why you think this is in any way important. If there was no consciousness until 5 minutes or 4.5 billion years after the Big Bang, or during 100 trillion cycles of an oscillating universe, what difference would it make to anyone's actual conscious experience