Yomin Postelnik's Simple Proof of God: Simply Fallacious
So instead some try to repackage old arguments by saying "yes, it's old, but look how shiny and impressive still looks after all these years." It's reminiscent of a used car salesman insisting that the junker you're looking at was only driven by a little old lady back and forth to church every Sunday. Given how many people can still fall for something like the latter, I guess we shouldn't be surprised if some still fall for the former as well.
Proof of a conscious Creator is readily available. The simplest proof (yet one that no atheist has ever been able to counter effectively) is that a universe of this size and magnitude does not somehow build itself, just as a set of encyclopedias doesn’t write itself or form randomly from the spill of a massive inkblot.
Source: Canada Free Press
Arguments which need to be countered are those which are sound and/or valid — in other words, legitimate arguments which make legitimate points. Fallacious arguments, on the other hand, don't actually need to be "countered" because their fallacies prevent them from proving the truth of their conclusion. This is the case here: Yomin Postelnik offers us a fallacious argument then seems surprised that it hasn't been "countered."
The first and most basic fallacy is that of False Analogy. Postelnik is attempting to use an analogy between the universe and a set of encyclopedias, but analogies in arguments like this are only legitimate if the two items being compared are similar enough in all the relevant attributes. Postelnik doesn't even try to explain what attributes he thinks they are similar in, but there is one vital attribute in which they are dissimilar.
We have lots of experience with encyclopedias; all the encyclopedias we know of were created by humans rather than randomly from spilled ink. We have experience with precisely one universe and we have yet to obtain direct information about how it formed at all. We are thus looking at a comparison of two very dissimilar items. Even if they happen to have similarities in other attributes, the dissimilarity here is sufficient to render the analogy illegitimate.
So what we have here is not a "simple proof" but instead a logically fallacious argument, specifically an argument that commits the fallacy of False Analogy. To be fair, this is a pretty common error so Yomin Postilnik isn't saying or doing anything new, but it's a disappointment that such an obvious fallacy is being sold so strongly as a legitimate argument.
...those who doubt the existence of a Creator believe that an entire universe, containing all of the billions of elements necessary for life to form, may have come about without a builder. As such, they give credence to billions of times more coincidences to having come about.
Curiously, Yomin Postelnik doesn't explain what those coincidences are or why they should be treated as any more amazing — that is to say, requiring a supernatural explanation — than any of the other possibilities which might have developed. This is what happens when people inappropriately use retrospective reasoning — i.e., when the nature of something is reasoned out retrospectively from the perspective of where it ends up rather than prospectively from the perspective of where it was headed.
Something that appears to be an "amazing coincidence" from where we stand now will only really appear that way because it happens to fit well with what we want or expect. Approaching the same situation from the other direction, though, there is nothing inherently special or amazing about that situation over all the other possible situations.
Religious apologists who engage in such retrospective reasoning are very much like people who come across arrows sticking out of the side of a tree, then paint bull’s-eyes around them in order to "prove" that whatever caused the arrows to be there must have been an intelligent design which intended to hit every one of those targets and only those targets. How is it that such "reasoning" is treated as credible, reasonable, and scientific by so many religious audiences?
You can't conclude that some outcome was intended simply by observing that that outcome is what exists. There are outcomes which were not intended by any intelligence and outcomes which were intended by an intelligence but which never occurred. It can be difficult under even the best circumstances to tell one from the other if we don't have access to the original events which precipitated the circumstances in question.
They believe that not only did whole planets appear spontaneously, but also believe that the fact that these planets do not collide as meteors do, that they have gravity, that they contain the proper atmospheric conditions for life to take hold and contain sustenance to sustain this life all happened by mere fluke.
Anyone who consults with scientists — or basic, introductory science texts — will know that the planets did not form "spontaneously." It's well-established that planets, stars, and entire solar systems form through a natural force which we all well acquainted with: gravity. Atheists thus do not believe that planets appeared spontaneously because atheists have no need for magic and fairy tales; instead, we can rely on the best of what modern science has to offer — and we aren't motivated to deny science simply because it contradicts some of our favorite fairy tales.
Even if all the planets somehow formed themselves, all somehow staying in perfect orbit and possessing gravity, even take for granted that all the chemicals needed for life were so how there as well, by sheer happenstance, would it then be possible for billions of species to spontaneously come about, each with a male and female of each kind so that they could exist in the long run?
Do all the planets have a "perfect" orbit? Well, perfect for what? Usually apologists for Intelligent Design limit their dramatic claims to just our planet by claiming that it has the "perfect" orbit for the development of life. That's another example of painting a bull's-eye around an arrow that's already been shot, but at least it's a bit more reasonable than trying to argue that all the planets have "perfect" orbits. I wonder what Yomin Postelnik thinks is "perfect" about the orbit of Jupiter or Mercury? I just don't get that.
Do all species have male and female? Of course not. Anyone who consulted scientists — or, once again, a basic, introductory science text — would know this. Do species "spontaneously" come about? Once again, the answer is "no." Species come about through natural evolution. We know this for a fact because we not only have abundant evidence of it occurring in the past, but it has been observed in the present both in the laboratory and the field. Speciation is a natural process that doesn’t require any magic to explain.
Yomin Postelnik does not appear to be any better informed about biology than he is about cosmology, but it's not been my experience that apologists for Intelligent Design know as much as real scientists do. That's not necessarily a bad thing because most people don't know as much about science as working scientists, but they shouldn't try to offer erroneous claims on the basis of that ignorance. If I don't know how something might have happened naturally, I don't try to claim that it happened "spontaneously" or that it occurred through some bit of magic performed by a supernatural being.
In an follow-up to his original article, Yomin Postelnik digs a deeper hole by making even worse errors of fact and science. Yes, worse — I'm not going to go into detail about them all but a couple of examples should suffice:
To begin with, not only is evolution far from proven science, in fact there are gaping holes in its theory.
One central problem with the theory of evolution is that it dictates that life formed from non-life. This is not plausible.
To begin with, Yomin Postelnik doesn't know what the theory of evolution is any more than he knows what atheism is. Evolutionary theory proceeds from the premise that life exists. How life came to be isn't addressed anywhere in the theory. Granted, it is expected that the same natural pressures and process at work in biological evolution would also have been at work in the development of life, but that expectation is a long way from having the origin of life included in evolutionary theory. No one who actually knows what evolutionary theory is can fail to know this simple fact.
As far as what Yomin Postelnik personally finds to be plausible or implausible, well that just has no relevance to science. If he had scientific or logical objections to such an event being plausible, he should have brought them up. Instead, all we have is little more than an expression of his own inability to imagine it.
A much larger problem with evolution is the lack of transitional fossils, fossils that show a gradual change from one form of species to the next. This isn’t an arbitrary problem. It is inconceivable that if man transitioned from ape, over time, that on the one hand we’d find a plethora of human fossils as well as a plethora of ape ones, but none in between that document such a slow and gradual change.
Once again, we are looking at some very basic errors: humans didn't evolve from apes, but from an ape-like ancestor, we do have large numbers of transitional fossils (Postelnik's objections to a couple of example are all factually incorrect), and we do have intermediate forms between us and our earlier hominid ancestors. We are lucky to have as many fossils as we do because fossilization is a relatively rare event. All of this is obvious and well-known to people who have even a superficial familiarity with evolution and biology.
Martin Wagner has a much more detailed refutation of all the scientific, factual, and logical errors in Yomin Postelnik's article: Yomin Postelnik, poster-boy for arrogant theistic fractal wrongness. He also critiques Postelnik's attempts to defend his ideas: Yomin turns up, defends himself by running and hiding
Comments
Yomin:
… all of the billions of elements necessary for life to form …
We’re going to need a bigger periodic table.
Geez, got nothing else to do today? Yomin Postelnik was so three weeks ago.
Postelnik has completely ignored the obvious, as most of these creationists do. Who created the creator? Why is it they can blatantly ignore this question while insisting there must be a creator? What then would be the ultimate creator? How was the ultimate creator created? I could go on, but that alone shows how empty and ridiculous, not to mention pointless this circular speculation is.
ALL fossils are transitional. Each and every organism on earth is a link in an evolutionary chain extending back to the first organic compounds formed on earth, and extending into the future to the future evolution or extinction of the species.
Saying that there are no transitional fossils just points out the utter ignorance of the speaker-all we have are transitional fossils.
Yomin likewise is using the ID argument, which, in a nutshell, claims the universe is far to magnificent/complex to have come about without design being involved. However, he doesn’t deal with regress, the idea that whatever designed this universe must be even grander and even more complex. If complexity can arise from less complex things, then he has no cause to doubt the universe formed. If complexity requires a creator, then his creator requires a creator. It also, btw, requires a definition. I don’t know anyone who can answer the question “What exactly are we looking for?” when I’m asking about their god. Generally, I get nonanswers and dishonest ones to boot—such as “whatever created the universe.” Oh, OK. So, if it turns out to be a singularity, your god is just another term for “singularity”? “Well, no. I wouldn’t worship the singularity.” Well, then, it appears that you were not being completely accurate when you described your god as the thing that is responsible for the universe, because I now see you have something far more specific in mind—care to share?
In the end, god is “spirit”—which is another undefined item. It’s exactly the same as saying: X created the universe. And then, when someone says, “Well, OK, but what is X?” You answer “X is what created the universe.” Well, I still have no idea what you’re on about. So, WHAT exactly is “X”? The response then goes, “Oh, I see what you want to know. X is Y.” God is spirit = X is Y. I can’t examine god. I can’t examine spirit. Therefore, I have no idea what either of those things are—and the main reality to grasp is _neither does anyone else_.
“God created the universe” is a meaningless statement while there is no god to examine.
With regard to the arrow analogy, this can’t be stressed enough. I’ve sometimes used it a little differently. I like to note that while the words “accurate” and “precise” are sometimes interchangeable, they are also sometimes different—depending on the usage. If I shoot an arrow on a shooting range and strike a bull’s eye on the target in the farthest left corner of the range, it can truly be said that it hit _precisely_ in the bull’s eye of the target at the farthest left corner of the range. But it can never be said that it struck accurately—if I was aiming elsewhere. ID proponents confuse precision and accuracy. Precision can happen without a design or designer. Accuracy cannot. The idea that the Earth is in precisely the right orbit to sustain a livable temperature does not in any way endorse anyone’s claims of accuracy. For that we’d need to prove intent. ID proponents have not shown intent—ever. They simply assume it.
As the article states, “You can’t conclude that some outcome was intended simply by observing that that outcome is what exists.”
Also, for readers who want more info about how our own existence biases us toward the idea that we were “meant to be” (that it’s all not only precise but accurate), look up “anthropic principle.”
>To begin with, not only is evolution far from proven science
The fact of genetic diversity yielding differences in subsequent generations due to breeding selection is not only a fact, but an observed fact and a repeatedly tested fact. Evolution _happens_. Domestic animals are products of this “unproven science.” The only question left is “Is there any limit to what Evolution can produce?” That question remains to be answered; but we keep finding more and more things it absolutely does, and YP is assuming it has a cap, but I don’t know what he bases that assumption upon. It _may_ have a cap, sure, but we have yet to figure out where it is.
Interesting. We so far have yet to hear any comments from this Postelnik guy himself.
The teleological argument for the existence of a deity is so old and has been refuted so many times. It’s also circular, since it assumes, as a necessary basis, design in the universe and life. This is itself a questionable premise. What grounds are there for such a presumption? Design necessitates that something is created for a particular practical purpose. While it is certainly true that most of the constituent parts of organisms serve a practical purpose, connected with the survival of the individual and/or the species, there are constituent parts of many organisms that do not, some of which are potentially detrimental to the organism’s survival (e.g. the appendix in humans), but which do serve a practical purpose in other organisms. Furthermore, some constituent parts serve one practical purpose badly in some organisms and a different practical purpose well in other organisms with the same trait. Common descent, which implies that nature has a tendency toward altering old genomes rather than producing completely new ones, explains these phenomena aptly. On the other hand, what explanation do creationists, who typically believe that all life was created by an omnipotent designing intelligence, have for these occurrences?
Even if it were true that all constituent parts of all organisms served practical purposes well, why conclude that life itself was created for some purpose? To assume so would be to commit the logical fallacy known as the Fallacy of Composition, whereby one concludes that what is true of the constituent parts of an object must also be true of the whole when such a conclusion is not logically warranted.
What is this purpose, anyway? Here, we run into the same problem as in a general situation in which a religious theist asserts that their god created us for some purpose: what is this purpose that this god of yours created us for, then? To have something to be worshipped and obeyed by? To have something to love? For aesthetic purposes? In any of these cases, the ‘purpose’ would amount to a pretty pointless one. In the latter two cases, it would arguably not really be a purpose at all.
In the case of the planets, we again face the same problem: if they were designed, then for what purpose? It has been argued that the Earth was designed to accommodate life (the anthropic principle), but in fact it is not a case of Earth being suited to facilitate life, but rather of life being adapted, through natural selection, to survive on Earth. Even if we accept the anthropic principle, what about the purpose of the other planets? As I’ve said, if they were just created for aesthetic purposes, that’s arguably not really a purpose at all.
As Richard Dawkins noted, the teleological argument, which is the principle argument used by I.D. ‘theorists’ in defence of the existence of a deity, is, at its heart, a religous, rather than a scientific, argument. The notion that life was designed by some god and hence has a divine purpose (whatever that purpose is) is a religious, not a scientific, notion.
By the way, I am not a fan of Dawkins. I think his main argument against the existence of a deity commits the Fallacy of False Analogy by transposing material complexity onto an alledgedly immaterial creator. Nonetheless, I think that the basic point made by the argument, namely that any god capable of creating a universe such as ours must in turn require an explanation of its, his or her own. However, I would state it in terms of power rather than complexity (i.e. any god powerful enough to create this universe must require its, his or her own explanation).
Born-again:
>I think his main argument against the existence of a deity commits the Fallacy of False Analogy by transposing material complexity onto an alledgedly immaterial creator.
I’m reading Dawkins right now for the first time. I thought part of his point was that theists want to have their cake and eat it too here. Theists claim that complex things cannot arise from simpler things, ala “pots don’t produce potters…” The idea that a complex universe arose from something like a singularity–or that complex creatures “evolved” from single-celled life is “ludicrous” on those grounds.
So, if something created this universe, it is, presumably, more complex than this universe.
The idea that immaterial “stuff”–whatever that would be–is immune from this reality is unwarranted special pleading. Nobody can examine immaterial existence to see whether it would have to comply or not, but the theist has to provide some reason that immaterial “stuff” has different rules of complexity. They are the ones insisting the complexity creates complexity. If they then want to say it doesn’t apply because god is immaterial, they need to support that claim with something (where are they getting their info that god is not complex–since it defies their prior “logic” and they have no god to examine? Why would “immaterial” stuff not be subject to their own rules of complexity? What about the “immaterial” makes it immune?).
Tracieh,
It’s only special pleading if you accept scientific handling of data, knowledge and truth as the only valid handling or discovery of knowledge and the only valid way of defining truth. I think Dawkins is clear on that being his position.
It is ironic that this is fundamentally an assumption, and not a provable assertion itself.
I mean, can you conclusively prove that “proving it” is the only or best way to discover truth?
Remember that logic, while useful, is something that someone made up. It is a sign system and way of talking about the world that is great, but I’m not sure we can make the claim that it is perfect.
As an example, it is easy to have a completely consistent logical progression, which is actually false. Simply start with a bad assumption.
Many people claim that the nature of observable existence and even the nature of logic and language point beyond themselves in a way that is compelling.
Austin: Beware of invoking the mythic name of Y**** P*****n**. He might sue ya.
Tracie: If you want some more Dawkins to read after you’re done with (I assume) The God Delusion, I can loan you my copy of The Blind Watchmaker. Whenever I see you, which is of course usually never, but will you be on the bat cruise? Anyway, TBW is a great science book, and the first thing that got me into Dawkins.
If He Who Must Not Be Named continues to write on subjects like atheism, evolution, secularism, etc., then he invites comment and critique from others. I’m not going to go out of my way to find material of his to comment on, but neither am I going to deliberately ignore material of his. If I come across it and have responses that I’d like to communicate, I’ll do so.
A lot of people recommend that book and I’m sure it’s great, but oddly enough I’ve just never been able to get into it whenever I’ve picked it up and tried. I’ve had a copy on my shelf for years now, but I can’t get more than a few pages into it — and I don’t typically have trouble with scientific texts, either. There must be something wrong with me.
Life adapts to conditions, not the other way around.
If dung beetles had enough mental capacity, they likely think their heap of cow flop must have been designed for them by a superior being.
Either way, it’s a huge amount of bull!
Hmmmm. 11 comments (well, 12 if you include this one) have posted on this board and there’s still no sign of this Postelnik character.
Tracie,
I notice that you omit ‘atheist’ from my nickname when addressing me. I think I can safely assume and hope that was either an honest mistake or an abbreviation. Man, I’d utterly hate you to think I was one those fanatical, fundamentalist, Bible-bashing Christians who go round making a massive deal out of how they were ‘born again of the Holy Spirit’. Remember, Tray, that just because I may have given the illusion of defending the theists’ case does not mean to suggest that I am one of them, much less a so-called ‘born-again’ Christian. I trust, however, that you already bore that in mind and that you read the whole comment rather than taking that sentence of mine out of context.
That aside, you very clearly point out the contradiction between I.D proponents and other anti-evolution creationists on the one hand insisting that the notion of simplicity generating complexity is ludicrous and that therefore our ultimate ancestors could not possibly be amoebae or bacteria or whatever, and simultaneously claiming that their god is immaterial and somehow therefore simple. That should have been so obvious to me, yet I overlooked it. Duh! I suppose you are correct to say that if this god who alledgedly created the universe and life is immaterial, then it is impossible to directly examine its complexity or lack thereof (I’m struggling a tad to get my head around this). Thus, the theist has no grounds on which to base their assertion that this god of theirs is simple.
What is this ‘immaterial god’ supposed to be, anyway? I’ve yet to hear a theist give anything more than vague answers: ‘God is the most pervasive form of agency’, ‘God is an eternal, omnipresent love’. WTF?
Humble: It’s only special pleading if you accept scientific handling of data, knowledge and truth as the only valid handling or discovery of knowledge and the only valid way of defining truth. I think Dawkins is clear on that being his position.
Really? Quote from a website or a book where Dawkins says that science the only valid way of obtaining truth.
It is ironic that this is fundamentally an assumption, and not a provable assertion itself.
I mean, can you conclusively prove that “proving it” is the only or best way to discover truth?
Science can never conclusively prove or disprove anything. It can only demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that A is true and/or B is false. Conclusions are provisional, fallible and hence open to falsification. Thus far, it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, but not conclusively proven, that science is a far better methodology than blind faith or intuition for obtaining knowledge in, for example, what forms of medicine are most effective. This conclusion is, however, provisional and may in future be falsified.
Remember that logic, while useful, is something that someone made up.
Urmm, no. Consequential thinking is part of the human genome and is something that most, if not all, animals possess to a degree.
I’m not sure we can make the claim that it is perfect.
Who said it was?
It’s also worth noting that you have just contradicted yourself. You’ve suggested that we think science is the best or only methodology for obtaining truth, but then gone on to suggest that we think that logic, which can exist outside of science, is perfect. Which is it to be?
For someone who denies being a Christian (or at least protests when someone suggests he is), you, Humble, seem to sympathise with them an awful lot.
The size and complexity of the universe clearly supports the idea that it was constructed by the devil.
Humble:
Kindly tell me what RELEVANT questions you posed, that went unanswered. Remember I said relevant, not concepts I never originally posed in the first place when I wrote them.
You’re very good at trying to twist my statements, into something not implied in the first place. Perhaps you should change your name to “Spinmeister”, though your spin won’t work on me.
I can perceive how you operate. Here’s a simple example, of that. If I were to say, “I like peaches”, you’d question me as to why I hate pears, or exponentially, what do I have against vegetables. A very rudimentary example, I admit. The principle is a correct one, I feel.
Re: frozen embryos or a lump of coal. Apparently, you didn’t grasp my concept at all. And you still didn’t answer the question I posed. Do I need to explain something so obvious to you?
Again, if you have any RELEVANT questions or comments to me, have at it.
Please ignore my previous post here. It is meant for another article. I plead guilty to a slip of the mouse. It belongs in Abortion Analogy and I will re-post it there. Thank you.
Humble,
I have to say your comment is pretty pointless, and from what I can tell is merely a jumbled up mix of excuses for lack of explanation. Allow me to elaborate.
‘It’s only special pleading if you accept scientific handling of data, knowledge and truth as the only valid handling or discovery of knowledge and the only valid way of defining truth. I think Dawkins is clear on that being his position.’
Well the fact that scientific handling of data has given us buildings, cars, modern medicine, space-shuttles and super-colliders is a pretty good reason to use it as the foremost kind of reasoning, don’t you think?
‘It is ironic that this is fundamentally an assumption, and not a provable assertion itself.’
That’s like saying that using english (or any language for that matter) as a form of communication being a good thing isn’t a provable assertion.
‘I mean, can you conclusively prove that “proving it” is the only or best way to discover truth?’
I think you’ll find by definition it is. I guess what you’re trying to say is that you don’t think using logic rather than faith-based lack thereof to ‘discover truth’ is the best way to do so. In regards to this, got any evidence?
‘Remember that logic, while useful, is something that someone made up. It is a sign system and way of talking about the world that is great, but I’m not sure we can make the claim that it is perfect.’
Logic when used perfectly is perfect. Often people claim they are using logic and are not (even if they truly believe they are) but that’s not an error in logic. That’s human error.
Also who exactly do you think ‘made up logic’? That’s like saying someone ‘made science’ or ‘made critical thinking’.
‘As an example, it is easy to have a completely consistent logical progression, which is actually false. Simply start with a bad assumption.’
Technically that’s a flaw in one’s logic.
‘Many people claim that the nature of observable existence and even the nature of logic and language point beyond themselves in a way that is compelling. ‘
This is relevant because? If you provided their reasons as to why then maybe it would be, but without, its a claim so unsupported that it just doesn’t have any bearing.
born-again atheist wrote:[Really? Quote from a website or a book where Dawkins says that science the only valid way of obtaining truth.]
Ok, here you go. Not sure this is all the way there, but is pretty close.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1200,Dawkins-Christmas-card-list,James-Randerson-Guardian
born again atheist wrote:[Science can never conclusively prove or disprove anything. It can only demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that A is true and/or B is false. Conclusions are provisional, fallible and hence open to falsification. Thus far, it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, but not conclusively proven, that science is a far better methodology than blind faith or intuition for obtaining knowledge in, for example, what forms of medicine are most effective. This conclusion is, however, provisional and may in future be falsified.]
Yes, but we’re not talking about blind faith, intuition or medicine. Leave God out of it for a minute and assume that there are things that we can’t observe or test or reproduce in some sort of empirical observational or analytical methodology.
Science can’t do much with that sort of inquiry. But Kant and Wittgenstein can do amazing things with those kinds of questions. Science isn’t the only game in town.
born-again atheist wrote:[Urmm, no. Consequential thinking is part of the human genome and is something that most, if not all, animals possess to a degree.]
Depends on how you define logic. The discipline of semiotics is not a part of human genome. But I hear you, cause and effect isn’t clever wordsmithing, it sure looks like a big part of the ways things really are.
born-again atheist:[It’s also worth noting that you have just contradicted yourself. You’ve suggested that we think science is the best or only methodology for obtaining truth, but then gone on to suggest that we think that logic, which can exist outside of science, is perfect. Which is it to be?]
I didn’t mean to imply your position (or anyone’s really) is that logic is perfect. My point was that logic, while ferociously useful, like science… it is really limited in some regards.
born-again atheist wrote:[For someone who denies being a Christian (or at least protests when someone suggests he is), you, Humble, seem to sympathise with them an awful lot.]
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of questions this last year. In my own thinking, I’ve been trying to leave disparate ideas on the table and not reject Christian ideas, simply because they are Christian… but to weigh them on their merits and accept or reject the position without bias. I’d have to say I’m in between faith and not faith, if that is even possible… and someone suggested that I should thoroughly investigate things before I made the leap one way or the other. The other suggestion was that I try to engage some folks in discussion that were solidly anti-Christian to see if a Christian argument or point of view could be defendable. And do the same thing in reverse with some Christian folks. That appealed a great deal to me. In post grad philosophy work, we would pick a topic, arbitrarily pick a side and go at it. It seemed like we would get to a point of clarity there more quickly that way. You could step back and surprisingly often, take some of the best of both perspectives.
Some folks may feel that is dishonest, but that hasn’t been my intent.
What I’ve found here is simple and unrelenting hostility and (it seems to me) bigotry towards anything remotely Christian, whether there is a valid point to be had or not. I haven’t had a single correspondence that didn’t result in someone attacking me personally, or immediately lumping me into some category that has nothing to do with reality. I feel like a black guy at a KKK meeting, and I’m not even black. In this world, the questioning theist is the minority… and it is clear that the perspective is not welcome. That isn’t surprising, but the violence of the reaction has been. It is disheartening, to say the least.
I think I’m done, at least with this blog. No one here seems interested in anything new. There is no openness to ideas that are sublime or surprising. I want to smack everyone with Goethe, or Dante… but here those are just pages of BS because they aren’t empirical enough. It is a one song rant fest, of people stroking Austin’s ego and all the vitriol gets old pretty quickly.
More about me than anyone wanted to know… but yeah, what you’re noticing is spot on. It is a position I’ve found some sympathy with - still have HUGE problems before I could accept it in any real form. It is ironic that the hostility I’ve found here has not been found with orthodox Christian folks when I put on the atheist hat and start beating on questions from the other perspective. They’ve been nice, consistent and coherent. I don’t know what to do with that - it seems ridiculous, but I think I was hoping it would be the other way around.
last post from me…
KAnonymous says:[Well the fact that scientific handling of data has given us buildings, cars, modern medicine, space-shuttles and super-colliders is a pretty good reason to use it as the foremost kind of reasoning, don’t you think?]
Sure, if the only things in life are buildings, cars, medicine, spacecraft and super-colliders.
On the other hand, using your examples from above, what about:
- buildings:the twin towers and 9/11 and the problem of terrorism
- cars:emissions and greenhouse gases from oil and automobiles
- medicine: AIDS pandemic, bird flu or whatever else medicine can’t do much about
- space shuttles: and multiple exploding space shuttles
- super colliders: while poor people in India don’t have clean water to drink
it seems to me that we still have important questions that science doesn’t have very good answers to, don’t you think?
K Anonymous says:]That’s like saying that using english (or any language for that matter) as a form of communication being a good thing isn’t a provable assertion.]
I think the better analogy would be that this is like saying english (or any language) is the only valid form of communication… and is unequivocally the best form of communication for all circumstances. I disagree.
K Anonymous says:[I think you’ll find by definition it is. I guess what you’re trying to say is that you don’t think using logic rather than faith-based lack thereof to ‘discover truth’ is the best way to do so. In regards to this, got any evidence?]
Nah. You don’t have to go to faith, blind faith or anything similar. There are things that are hard to talk about, but that we know and experience. The stock example is, “describe what coffee smells like.”
You don’t need the scientific method to get you there. That is an overly simplistic example, but there are things outside of the realm of any sort of accurate expression in language, or scientific discovery. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist or that we can’t know anything useful about them.
K Anonymous says:[Logic when used perfectly is perfect. Often people claim they are using logic and are not (even if they truly believe they are) but that’s not an error in logic. That’s human error.]
Only if you define perfect in a very limited way. If by perfect, you also mean, completely comprehensive, for example… you quickly have a map with a legend that says, “one mile equals one mile” - and that just isn’t very useful.
If you take simple examples from mathematics, 2 never goes into 3. It is an “irrational” number. You can’t have a square root of a negative one, but i is still useful. Infinity creates logical problems, but it is still used. Imperfect.
K Anonymous says:[Also who exactly do you think ‘made up logic’? That’s like saying someone ‘made science’ or ‘made critical thinking’.]
Google “history of ideas”. Again, it depends on how you define logic… but as a discipline, or in terms of how it relates to science or philosophy, it was primarily the Greeks. The history of science is pretty well documented. You can easily identify the major players who “made science” along the way, in a real and meaningful way.
I think I understand what you mean… and that the laws of science and things we can describe mathematically sure seem to be “real”. I’m with you. But Newton is still useful, even if he isn’t completely correct in describing what we call gravity. As far as Newton is different from Einstein… and as far as Einstein is different from the next big breakthrough there, science is a “made up” animal.
K Anonymous says:[Technically that’s a flaw in one’s logic.]
Ok, work with me here.
1. Logic when used perfectly is perfect.
2. Logic when not used perfectly is not perfect.
3. Not logic when used perfectly is perfect.
4. Not logic when not used perfectly is not perfect.
Do you see the problem? Language is slippery. In this case, all of the above can not be true, without changing the meaning of either “logic”, “used perfectly”, or “perfect”. But if you presented the first two, or the second two in isolation, they could easily be defined in a way as to be true. If logic is expressed in language, and language isn’t perfect expression (and how can it be?) then logic is never expressed perfectly related to language. The more complicated you get, the more “slippage” occurs.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, but perfect is problematic.
humble wrote:[‘Many people claim that the nature of observable existence and even the nature of logic and language point beyond themselves in a way that is compelling. ‘
K Anonymous says:This is relevant because? If you provided their reasons as to why then maybe it would be, but without, its a claim so unsupported that it just doesn’t have any bearing.]
It is relevant because of the limitations of empirical inquiry. Take Sojourner’s problem with the “who created God?” bit. If cause and effect is the axiom, then you run into the problem of infinite regression.
Go all the way back through the physical sequence of events, all the way back to the Big Bang if you buy that one. The cause was the Big Bang and the effect was the beginning of the universe. What caused the Big Bang? Some astronomers believe that there was some sort of balance in pre-existent substance and something happened to upset the balance and the Big Bang resulted. Fine. What caused the balance to be upset? Where did the pre-existent and balanced substance come from? And so on…
Aristotle deals with this at some length. He holds that because of the problem of infinite regression, there necessarily was a Primal Cause. The Unmoved Mover. Normal rules not only did not apply, but COULD not apply to this primary beginning point.
If you buy that, the very nature of cause and effect, so precious to logic and science… points to something that by logical necessity could not have been Caused. You either have to abandon cause and effect as an axiom and allow for uncaused effects and uneffected causes, which does not bear with our experience… (unless you start talking about sub atomics) or you have to introduce some sort of Primal Cause as a magnificent exception to the rule.
On the level of language, we have a word for “indescribable” and “nothingness”. If you understood those words, this is a problem. How can you know something that by definition, is “unknowable” and does not exist? We have a word for that too, “non-existent”. How can we reference the unreferencable? But we can and I just did.
You can’t subject “nothing” to empirical study, by definition. And you can’t drag the Primal Cause into the laboratory and subject it to reproducible peer reviewed analysis. And yet we have Aristotle and his Physics and words for nothing with folks like Sartre and many others writing entire books as to the implications of them with real fruit as to the limits of knowledge and the knowable.
So science is helpless here. But again, many people don’t believe that inquiry has to stop with the purely empirical.
You, however, can do, or not do, whatever you want. Have fun with your slide rule writ large and exploding space shuttles… I’m taking my T.S. Eliot and moving on.
Here we go again. This man obviously does not believe in a God in his heart but has been brainwashed. I would rather believe in scientists who can give proof of existence of millions of years ago, than someone who has no proof of a god only of evil that has been commited in the name of a god.
I was born with no religion to a jewish family and made up my own mind, and as I have seen on videos young Muslim children from an early age being brainwashed,with thoughts of killing any one who is not of the same faith.
Religious people are now scared due to the growing population of atheists, and money and power would then be taken from the CHurches.
I cannot be buried under any faith. What does that say for religion.
We all know we were evolved and the earth formed over many billions of years.
‘Sure, if the only things in life are buildings, cars, medicine, spacecraft and super-colliders.
On the other hand, using your examples from above, what about:
- buildings:the twin towers and 9/11 and the problem of terrorism
- cars:emissions and greenhouse gases from oil and automobiles
- medicine: AIDS pandemic, bird flu or whatever else medicine can’t do much about
- space shuttles: and multiple exploding space shuttles
- super colliders: while poor people in India don’t have clean water to drink’
Well science certainly didn’t create AIDS or bird flu for a start. And when bad things happen as a result of new technologies, we use science to come up with better technologies. Science is only a force for bad when used by bad people. There’s nothing wrong with science itself. Not to mention the fact, what other than morally used science is going to give poor Indian people water to drink? None of the problems you have listed are solvable without science though you seem to claim that science is responsible. Say what you like, but without science of any kind humans would have an existance that is below that of cavemen. We wouldn’t even have clothing or use pointy sticks, because to make or even see the benefit of these things, you need science.
‘it seems to me that we still have important questions that science doesn’t have very good answers to, don’t you think?’
Actually science will undoubtably show itself to be the cause of these problems. Try fighting AIDS with your bare hands and I think you’ll end up losing. Also if science isn’t going to solve these things, what do you think will?
‘I think the better analogy would be that this is like saying english (or any language) is the only valid form of communication… and is unequivocally the best form of communication for all circumstances. I disagree.’
No this isn’t the better analogy, for the simple reason that unlike english, logic and science are universal. English has competitors as a means of communication, science and logic have no competitors for discovery. You seem to think they do, but you’ve yet to name what these are.
‘Google “history of ideas”. Again, it depends on how you define logic… but as a discipline, or in terms of how it relates to science or philosophy, it was primarily the Greeks. The history of science is pretty well documented. You can easily identify the major players who “made science” along the way, in a real and meaningful way.’
Well seeing as when a caveman first discovered that tying a pointy rock to his stick made it easier to bring down animals he was using science. I sincerely doubt this was documented in google history or anywere else. You seem to think of science as something its not. It has a very basic meaning. One good definition is as follows,
’systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation. ‘
What this shows is that the Kamiokande nuetrino detector in no more an example of science than when a caveman discovered fire. Its more advanced, its not ‘more scientific.’
‘I think I understand what you mean… and that the laws of science and things we can describe mathematically sure seem to be “real”. I’m with you. But Newton is still useful, even if he isn’t completely correct in describing what we call gravity. As far as Newton is different from Einstein… and as far as Einstein is different from the next big breakthrough there, science is a “made up” animal.’
No, humans have yet to discover much about the universe, science isn’t flawed. Science doesn’t change, what we think we know changes based on our interpretation of what science tells us.
‘K Anonymous says:[Technically that’s a flaw in one’s logic.]
Ok, work with me here.
1. Logic when used perfectly is perfect.
2. Logic when not used perfectly is not perfect.
3. Not logic when used perfectly is perfect.
4. Not logic when not used perfectly is not perfect.’
How does 3 follow from either 1 or 2? Without trying to sound ironic, your use of logic is flawed.
‘Do you see the problem? Language is slippery. In this case, all of the above can not be true, without changing the meaning of either “logic”, “used perfectly”, or “perfect”. But if you presented the first two, or the second two in isolation, they could easily be defined in a way as to be true. If logic is expressed in language, and language isn’t perfect expression (and how can it be?) then logic is never expressed perfectly related to language. The more complicated you get, the more “slippage” occurs.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, but perfect is problematic.’
Well as I said above the example you use doesn’t show anything. As 3 is simply false. You don’t need to change logic or perfect for all to be true because 3 isn’t true, because you didn’t use logic to get there. Besides as you say, language is the problem not logic, so though you might have a valid point about the difficulty of USING logic perfectly, logic itself is still perfect.
‘It is relevant because of the limitations of empirical inquiry. Take Sojourner’s problem with the “who created God?” bit. If cause and effect is the axiom, then you run into the problem of infinite regression.’
Has anything else even offered the hint of a solution to this problem? Answer, no. One argument a LOT of people use is that god created it. This is no better because then what created god?
‘Go all the way back through the physical sequence of events, all the way back to the Big Bang if you buy that one. The cause was the Big Bang and the effect was the beginning of the universe. What caused the Big Bang? Some astronomers believe that there was some sort of balance in pre-existent substance and something happened to upset the balance and the Big Bang resulted. Fine. What caused the balance to be upset? Where did the pre-existent and balanced substance come from? And so on…’
The fact that science hasn’t yet told of everything is no reason to criticise it or say its limited. What if you lived in the year 500 BC and were told science is limited because it can’t tell you why the moon appears some nights as full, and other nights not?
‘Aristotle deals with this at some length. He holds that because of the problem of infinite regression, there necessarily was a Primal Cause. The Unmoved Mover. Normal rules not only did not apply, but COULD not apply to this primary beginning point.’
This is why we have logic as well as science. Logic can sometimes go beyond science, as science always requires at least some empericial evidence, logic requires only sound arguments. Its arguable logic has yet to come up with an answer to this, but who’s to say it won’t? Even if it doesn’t, again, there is nothing else that can.
‘If you buy that, the very nature of cause and effect, so precious to logic and science… points to something that by logical necessity could not have been Caused. You either have to abandon cause and effect as an axiom and allow for uncaused effects and uneffected causes, which does not bear with our experience… (unless you start talking about sub atomics) or you have to introduce some sort of Primal Cause as a magnificent exception to the rule.’
You’re talking as if there is a point in time at which the ‘universe started’. This in itself is a fallacy, so you aren’t solving anything by abandoning logic and science here, you’re just replacing one problem with another. Don’t get me wrong its a very interesting question, but no good answer, scientific or no, logical or no, has yet to be given by anyone.
‘You can’t subject “nothing” to empirical study, by definition. And you can’t drag the Primal Cause into the laboratory and subject it to reproducible peer reviewed analysis. And yet we have Aristotle and his Physics and words for nothing with folks like Sartre and many others writing entire books as to the implications of them with real fruit as to the limits of knowledge and the knowable.’
Care to name anything else that can study nothingness?
‘So science is helpless here. But again, many people don’t believe that inquiry has to stop with the purely empirical. ‘
As I said, that’s what logic’s for.
humble,
(In case you happen to check back after your final post.)
If you need to go to a doctor, do you want one who devises treatment based on 1) Scientific methodology, 2) Instinct 3)Intuition, or 4) Revelation?
Naturally, I choose a doctor who says he treats based on science. When I investigate questions about the possible existence of a supernatural realm, questions which are just as important to me, I also turn to science.
John K wrote:[If you need to go to a doctor, do you want one who devises treatment based on 1) Scientific methodology, 2) Instinct 3)Intuition, or 4) Revelation?
Naturally, I choose a doctor who says he treats based on science. When I investigate questions about the possible existence of a supernatural realm, questions which are just as important to me, I also turn to science.]
I’m with you.
The interesting thing here that it is hard to get away from our assumptions and what we believe. In this case, people might read these four things differently.
Three examples:
1) Someone assumes that instinct, intuition are not valid, or remarkably less valid than scientific method and that revelation does not actually exist. Medicine is based on the first one and only the first one in that case.
2) Someone assumes that instinct and intuition are not incompatible with the scientific method and that the “flash or brilliance” or insight can be extremely intuitive and still be valid.
This person might be fine with a diagnosis that includes elements of 2 and 3, as long as they don’t ONLY use intuition or instinct, but back that up with the medical knowledge they have and scientific process around it.
I’d fall in that camp. Sometimes insight just seems to happen. We call it intuition and it doesn’t have to stop there. I can imagine a doctor having a moment of genius that didn’t occur through experimentation or testing, but could be backed up by those things before being acted on.
3) A Christian doctor might believe that all four can be keys pieces of a diagnosis. God gave us a world to study that often makes sense and “reveals” things useful to us through the nature of the universe itself. This can be applied to medicine through flashes of intuition, sharpened and applied through a scientific method and used to help people.
This guy might pray for your children after they leave his office, but he’ll probably want to vaccination them as well.
Assuming that there actually is a god, which one is the “the” god? One can argue a god but which one is the real one? All the great religions make claims that theirs is the only true one, all others are false, so, will the real god please stand up so we can clarify the creator. LOL!
humble,
What assumptions do you think
people are making, other than “cogito, ergo sum”?
I don’t think the Christian doctor who believes God reveals the world to us is doing so on the basis of an assumption. I think the doctor is making a conclusion based on evidence, I just think the doctor is using faulty or incomplete data or reasoning.
I also don’t assume revelation doesn’t exist, just that if it does exist it is no different from random chance and therefore immaterial (no pun intended).
Does prayer make medical care more effective? No.
My Christian Science grandparents relied on prayer, but they didn’t actually believe their prayers would heal them. They believed if they died, it was God’s will. Or so I am told. I never actually got to know them. They died. It actually makes sense to me that if you believe in heaven, you wouldn’t want to delay getting there and maybe you would want to avoid medical care. To me, the foolish part is believing in heaven without any real evidence.
John K asked:[What assumptions do you think people are making, other than “cogito, ergo sum”?]
That is a fascinating example – did you know that Descartes’ whole point with that was to advance medicine and eventually get to the point where people would not have to die?
I might be stating it badly. But at the heart of this I think people either assume that the universe is entirely material, or it isn’t. If it is all material, it leads us to the notion that the empirical process is the only legitimate means to real knowledge. There are some heavyweight thinkers who would disagree with this I think.
As an example, I’m thinking of Peirce, “il lume naturale” and abduction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
The move here is that we tend towards the right answer even when we don’t have a good reason to, or a hard and fast point to start from.
Think about someone writing a song. They don’t normally do this by rules or by a step by step logical process. Often, it just “happens”. They have an idea and they puke it out onto the page. At that point, you can adjust it, tweak it, produce it, add the guitar licks, and blah blah blah… but the initial idea and often the most compelling piece is not normally planned out.
Peirce’s notion was that the best scientific thinking starts this way as well. Even if Newton didn’t get hit with an apple, that story resonates, because we’ve all had good ideas from a random occurrence or made a connection from a seemingly unrelated event. Before we have a testable hypothesis, we have a vague and ill formed idea that is the center of the new thing we pursue. Having the idea and chasing it, is in the realm of abduction. Beating the idea into submission and testability and repeatability, etc… is scientific process.
Abduction seems reasonable to me, but I can’t prove it empirically. But if it is correct, then logical necessity and empiricism aren’t the only foundations for science, or any other discipline. We also have this mystical, mysterious ability to “get” things right when we haven’t eliminated all, or even most, of the possibilities.
John K wrote:[I don’t think the Christian doctor who believes God reveals the world to us is doing so on the basis of an assumption. I think the doctor is making a conclusion based on evidence, I just think the doctor is using faulty or incomplete data or reasoning.]
I think I’m following, and that is probably a better way to say it. I would make the case that we all are using faulty, incomplete data and reasoning. And yet, look around at what we can do and how far we’ve come with technology, etc… and it makes me wonder if someone or something hasn’t stacked the deck in our favor.
John K wrote:[It actually makes sense to me that if you believe in heaven, you wouldn’t want to delay getting there and maybe you would want to avoid medical care. To me, the foolish part is believing in heaven without any real evidence.]
*Laughing* I hadn’t really thought of it that way before. I’m not sure how a religious person would reconcile that one.
humble,
I don’t think anyone believes the universe is entirely material. I think some believe the ephemeral parts of the universe, such as feelings or consciousness, are products of the natural world while others believe they are manifestations of and proof of the supernatural.
“Think about someone writing a song. They don’t normally do this by rules or by a step by step logical process.”
So, shouldn’t this mean great songs can be seen in the scribbles children make when you hand them a crayon and a piece of paper? Song writers can now dispense with: learning the language, learning to write the language, learning the structure of poetry, learning about the conveyance of ideas (irony, sarcasm, etc.), learning about the structure of music and how to write music on a sheet? I don’t think so. Song writing, as far as I have seen, is very much a step by step process.
All discoveries have a moment when they come into existence, but they don’t just “happen” at random.
I could see your point if Newton had not been one of the world’s great intellects, had not been trained in science and mathematics, had been the only person to ever see an object fall and had not been mistaken in his calculations or in the scope of his theory. Then I might even believe the idea of gravity had been revealed to him. As it is, I believe he had enormous talent and applied it relentlessly to arrive at a brilliant, if still flawed, empirical deduction. He was searching for patterns, as people tend to do, and he found one.
“Abduction seems reasonable to me, but I can’t prove it empirically.”
I think Austin Cline (does anyone remember him?) addressed this in his recent, timely post:
http://atheism.about.com/b/2008/07/14/john-madziarczyk-atheists-rely-too-much-on-science.htm
in which he said, “Anything that has any sort of impact on our world can, in principle, be investigated by science.” If you can’t test for abduction or provide empirical proof, then it’s no different from random chance and it’s existence is irrelevant.
Yes, as you suggested, something has stacked the deck in our favor. I believe it’s called “evolution”.
John K wrote:[So, shouldn’t this mean great songs can be seen in the scribbles children make when you hand them a crayon and a piece of paper?]
Maybe. They won’t have the tools to express those and fully flesh them out (unless they are Mozart) but it isn’t hard to imagine a child coming up with a melody or a hook for something that could become a great song.
Remember I’m talking about beginnings here, not the whole process.
John K wrote:[Song writers can now dispense with: learning the language, learning to write the language, learning the structure of poetry, learning about the conveyance of ideas (irony, sarcasm, etc.), learning about the structure of music and how to write music on a sheet? I don’t think so. Song writing, as far as I have seen, is very much a step by step process.]
No, those things are key, but that is the adjusting, tweaking, producing piece… that I referred to. If you get a chance to talk to a songwriter, ask them about this. You don’t write a song like you write a geometric proof. The last stages of finalizing it will be very much like writing a proof.
The first stages have notes running up the side of the page, across the middle, out of order ideas in a completely incoherent mess.
If it were about understanding the mechanics of music, language and poetry… then presumably anyone who put enough work into those pieces would then be a good songwriter.
It doesn’t work that way. It isn’t a one to one relationship.
If it did, great film critics would be writing the best screen plays.
I think this is important, because it does relate to Newton, science and the topic. When I said I couldn’t prove abduction, I didn’t mean that I couldn’t prove it existed… only that I’m not sure we can prove that it works the way Peirce claims it does.
It might be one way of many for ideas to develop in an early stage.
Also, it would be indirect. I can’t empirically prove that Newton had a great idea - but he clearly did, because he did a bunch of other stuff to develop it. Same thing. The “smoke” of ideas that are developed into testable hypothesis are evidence of the “fire” of abduction (or something like abduction).
The great questions through the history of science clearly happened, and happened before they were verfiable or testable. (The really bad questions did too, and presumably fell by the wayside.)
What if DNA is a double helix instead of a single one?
What if energy and mass are related somehow?
What if the “pull” I observe of things towards the earth can be mathematically described?
Those are at the very heart of some of the most amazing scientific accomlishments we’ve seen.
The point isn’t that somehow these are revelatory in nature. Or that anyone can have a great thought, that they then can flesh out completely. The point is that at the beginning moments of Crick considering DNA in a new way, he didn’t have anything testible or empirical. Eventually he did, but probably not in the first few minutes of thinking about it.
I can’t work myself into saying that the great thought isn’t great, because you can’t empirically poke at it yet.
Creativity is all about pattern recognition and manipulation.
“If it were about understanding the mechanics of music, language and poetry… then presumably anyone who put enough work into those pieces would then be a good songwriter.”
I think you have that backwards. If “abduction” was the cause of creativity, wouldn’t it be evenly dispersed throughout the population, or are you claiming some artists are more prone to abduction than others? Oh, that’s right. You can’t actually measure “abduction”, or show it actually exists, can you?
It does take talent to be creative and some people have more talent than others, but the talent is in patern recognition. Talent which suscessful artists hone through experience and study.