This is all Darwinian evolution really says in the end.
In the topic of morality, Allan, Neil, Lizzie and others use the same old con of claiming that morality is not accidents, its….and then they just trail off into a non-answer. I find this a very frustrating and telling habit of the materialist.
There is no “other” thing there. Unless you want to include an intelligence, or a destiny into the theory (which destroys the theory of materialism) you aren’t left with another aspect to why things are. You have accidents, that somehow formed a durable combination. Its such a dishonest aspect of materialism that when its not convenient they don’t want to admit this part. But in not admitting it, they struggle with saying anything to counter it. They can use words like emergence, or nature did it, but that’s meaningless. The materialist theory is that it is simply accidents that breed well.
Every time a materialist tries to claim there is more to it than that, when they need to have a stronger arguing basis, don’t be fooled by the dodge. That is all they have. Accidents. Sorry, to force them to accept their own reality.
So Allan’s reply to the assertion that materialism is all about accidents that breed, is that, well, a sieve that filters out different thicknesses of sand or grit isn’t accidental, so neither is life.
Decide for yourself if this analogy evens makes sense, and if it is enough to overcome their accidents problem.
A sieve can stop certain size particles from passes through a hole. Well yeah. So you have that….which is, mm, interesting.
phoodoo,
Here is what I actually said:
Natural selection acts like a sieve in the sense that it allows passage of one kind of ‘thing’ and prevents that of another. The differential is on size in the sieve case, and on the production of greater/lesser offspring numbers in the NS case. The passage of these objects is into the future, rather than the space below the sieve. Yes, there are differences.
Whether it matters, in any fundamental sense, that ‘life is accidents’ is about as important as whether it matters, in a fundamental sense, that ‘the genetic code is a real code’. That is, it’s very important to peddlers of argument by definition. I argue against the depiction of life as ‘accidental’ for purely semantic reasons. But again, I find myself accused of some kind of dodge. Don’t be fooled! You know better than that! You can see the empty, desperate, despairing heart at the back of my words, no matter how much I spin and writhe! Well done, you.
Well, if you define as “accident” everything that was not the intended result of action by an intelligent agent, then sure, I think lots of things are the results of “accidents”, including our capacity for moral judgement.
But that is such a non-standard definition of “accident” that I find it useless.
Is it an “accident” that a river flows down the mountain but not up? Or is someone intentionally guiding it down the mountain at all times?
Is it an “accident” that snowflakes form into six-sided crystals with six axes of symmetry, or is someone hand-crafting each one?
Is it an “accident” that the rings of Saturn form a perfect disc, rather than a messy cloud of rocks, or did someone explicitly design them that way?
Because if you are going to class the working out of consistent natural laws as “accidents” then I’m going to call them “the working out of consistent natural laws”. And I think our moral sense arose from the working out of consistent natural laws, including the laws of physics and chemistry, but also including the law that self-replicating patterns that self-replicate most efficiently will persist for longest.
I suggest that the capacity for moral judgement is one of the self-replicating patterns that has led to the persistence of the human species.
Allan Miller,
Were you attempting at all to counter the notion that life in a Darwinain-Materialist framework is only accidents that breed?
I have seen no counter whatsoever frankly, other than an analogy that sieves sort things by size.
That you don’t like it described as accidents is not surprising to me. Materialist hate owning up to that reality. Except when they are asked if life is guided. Then they kind of hem and haw and say something about well, no, but, um, its complicated….
Elizabeth,
Accidents means not intended Lizzie. I don’t want to play your humpty dumpty game of playing word definitions.
The “working out of consistent natural laws” is a meaningless, bullshit phrase.
Accidents Lizzie. There is no such thing as natural laws if the laws themselves are also accidents.
And Lizzie I hope you know that snowflakes can come is all sorts of shapes. They aren’t more organized simply because some look pretty .
The argument of snowflakes doesn’t help your side one bit. Where did the laws of molecular attraction come from.
Nature! That’s a cop out. Your side can not explain why “nature” exists. Our side can.
phoodoo,
No, I was explaining why I do not consider it an adequate depiction of the process. You do – well done!
I was illustrating another arena in which I do not think the term ‘accident’ applies, to support my contention that ‘accident’ is a poor choice of description for a process with bias. Others have been proferred – is it ‘accidental’ that water flows downhill, that moons orbit, that sugar dissolves?
phoodoo, you seem not to actually read my posts (and yet still, like a moron, I type …). As I said, I do not really care deeply about the question. It is mere semantics. But you are determined to believe I do. Please yourself.
phoodoo,
Shorter phoodoo: “I am not playing your bullshit word definition games. You must play MINE!”.
Do you consider it accidental when two particular organisms meet and mate? Or when one eats another, or one infects or parasitises another? Is there any role for ‘accident’ in the affairs of living creatures, per your definition?
It’s not a “game” phoodoo. I’m just trying to clarify what you mean.
If by “accident” you mean “anything that not the result of an intentional action”, then I think that most events in the universe are “accidents”, including the evolution of our capacity for moral judgements.
I find it a most unhelpful designation, as it is not the way the word is usually used.
People do not normally describe the six-pointedness of a snow crystal as being “accidental”.
Indeed that’s why, in Dembski’s “Explanatory Filter” he distinguishes between two class of non-intentional events: “Law” and “Chance”. Only the second is what is normally meant by “accident”.
Do you differ from Dembski (and other UD denizens) in not distinguishing between Law and Chance?
phoodoo,
Hmmmm. That has a familiar ring. “Your position can’t explain oxygen”.
Allan Miller,
Our side can’t explain oxygen? WTF? Your side can’t. You have zero explanation for why laws exist.
We seem to have some self-replication going on here.
phoodoo,
No, I was quoting something said (repeatedly, with minor variants) by one of ‘your side’. You seemed to be channelling him.
‘Your side’s explanation of oxygen is, nonetheless, a little … ummm … short on substance.
Elizabeth,
Oh come on, even if one were to be so generous as to grant you a semantic difference between law and chance (even when you can’t not explain the existence of laws) , what “law” creates morals? None! So since you don’t have a law that says, if something copies itself badly, it will copying a combination which makes morals, your law and chance divide has to allow the existence of majority to still fall into the chance category.
So, in a generous use of words, chance equals=accidents, again morality is accidental. There are laws that make molecules attract. We can describe these laws (that you have no explanation for, remember). There is no law that makes morality.
Accidents! Even in humpty dumpty land.
Allan Miller,
That an intelligence created such an environment, is short on substance?
Compared to your explanation of its existence? Nature did it?
phoodoo,
Well … yes! Completely devoid of substance, in fact.
In such bald content-free summations, I see nothing to lead one to prefer one over the other, beyond noting that ‘intelligence’ is, on observation, limited to entities within nature, not outside it. Try willing a quark into existence, see how you get on.
Allan Miller,
The facts that billions upon billions of humans have thought that the most obvious explanation for organized structure to the universe is that it was created by a higher intelligence, suggests that you seeing no reason to believe that over just throwing up your hands and saying, “Nature I guess, beats me..” puts your incredulity overwhelmingly in the minority of man’s thought.
And a single person is all it takes to change the world.
You explanation seems to be “let there be light”. If that satisfies you, then that’s fine.
They are not mentioned in the bible, so where do they come from and how do you know?
Are you getting the idea? The point is that throughout history the world has been full of people who think that “god did it” is a suitable answer to every question. Luckily for us there has been a minority of people for who that was not a satisfactory answer. Hence why you can talk on a computer to people far, far away. If we’d only ever had the people who were satisfied with the “god did it” answer we’d all be in caves still.
OMagain,
Replaced by “beats me?”
The point is you have an answer you are happy with. Which is great! The lord Jesus did it, and that’s good enough for you.
No need to be ashamed. Be proud! That answer was good enough for your pappy, and his pappy and his pappy before him, all the way back.
Jesus dun it, you know it. And that’s that.
Oh, remind me, where did the laws of molecular attraction come from?
Jesus?
Can we make an important distinction here?
We do not know WHY the laws of nature are the way they are, and that may in the end be undiscoverable.
But nobody here is arguing that they could not have been selected by a Creator Divinity.
What some of us are arguing is that GIVEN such laws, our capacity to categorise actions as “right” or “wrong” is not an “accident” – it is the result of the working out of those laws within nature, i.e. as “natural”>
And some of us are also arguing that whether we consider that capacity as “natural” or as implanted individually within our souls by divine intervention to deviate the working of those natural laws makes no practical difference.
Lumbered as we are with the capacity to regard some actions as right and some as wrong, whether through natural or divine means, we are still left with the problem as to how to decide which actions are right and which are wrong.
And thinking there is a divine preference is no help, because there is no objective way of distinguishing between a true revelation of that divine preference and a mistake. So we might as well ignore the possiblity of a divine preference and figure it out the hard way, i.e. by observing what actions lead to harm and what to good.
Which is a lot safer.
I’m quite happy to accept that for the sake of argument, it’s just that even given that phoodoo seems to have nothing to add.
Sure reality was created, but now what? phoodoo has nothing to add. Objective morality is as elusive as it ever was, regardless of the origin of the universe.
So it makes no difference either way, their ideas are sterile and unchanging from when they were first written down. They have nothing to add to our understanding of reality, even when we accept their starting point
And that minority is more productive than the rest all put together, as the majority literally has nothing to add as “insert deity here dun it” is quite sufficient.
Elizabeth,
Which law are you referring to? Molecular attraction?
Exactly.
Me? No one law in particular.
Elizabeth,
So let’s put morals into the “chance” category, shouldn’t we, if there is no law which we can say creates them?
Like I said, accidents.
shrug. Your imaginary god is so weak and powerless it has to explicitly make things happen. my imaginary god just makes universes and whatever happens, emerges, all on it’s own. Sometimes people, sometimes not.
phoodoo,
Consenus omnium is no argument for anything. Couldn’t care less what billions and billions of people think.
I have a more substantive rationale than “Nature I guess, beats me..”, but you aren’t really interested, are you? Easier to attack a straw man. Saves us both a lot of time; I avoid having to type anything, and you avoid the notional chore of pretending to read it. Everyone’s a winner!
The dichotomous division of the world of phenomena into ‘Chance’ and ‘Law’ is just weird. Especially with the reflexive addition ‘you don’t get Laws by Chance!’
It’s one thing to think of a designer intervening to arrange matter just so with regard to its properties, quite another to think of an entity, using intelligence for the purpose of generating something from nothing, complete with those properties.
Allan Miller,
Well, clearly you have saved a lot of time here but not typing it all this time, this we can agree. I guess you will continue to save time.
Why would anyone bother when you already know it’s wrong?
Chuckle. You’ve already said that “let there be light” is sufficient for you so you can hardly complain about missing details at this point.
phoodoo,
Brill! I’ll get the dinner on, then. We’re having duck.
Allan Miller,
Why is it “quite another”? Do you have some opinions about that God’s arsenal or intent?
Do you agree with fmm that god holds a 4 dimensional grid in it’s mind where each grid square contains an archetypal species?
Allan Miller,
Do the people who think its immoral to eat duck, do so because its a survival advantage, that went through the sieve?
phoodoo said:
Under physicalism, there are no such things as natural laws, period. There is just the way matter appears (to those with accident-generated thoughts) to regularly behave. Those are not laws, they are patterns of behavior. Descriptive, not prescriptive. Everything, under physicalism, is, as you point out, accidental. Even human intentionality is necessarily an illusion – the appearance of prescription where there can be none. There can only be the inexorable happenstance thoughts and activities of a world moved entirely by physico-chemical accident.
Using semantics to twist words and definitions into pretzels cannot change this essential problem for physicalists (proxy atheism).
William J. Murray,
I wish I would have said that.
Although I tried.
William J. Murray,
I think Lizzie always tries to explain a world where nothing was intended, but also has its own internal intention, as if that is some logical conscript.
The source of that internal intention is the unnameable, magical mystery force that just is.
Whereas you slap the label “god” on and are satisfied.
Argument by proclamation.
OMagain,
I have no opinion at all about theology. All this time you still don’t get that.
So why do you have an opinion on a-theology?
OMagain,
Its called following the evidence.
What evidence?
To which god does the evidence lead? To Thor perhaps? Or to a god that you already believed in before you saw this “evidence”?
I’m sure, if the latter, it’s just a total coincidence.
But really, many gods have been thought to exist, what evidence leads you to a specific named one then?
With respect, William, you yourself have just posted a paradigm case of “semantics”: you’ve asserted A to mean B, “period”, then declared anyone who defines A differently to be “twist[ing] words and definitions into pretzels”.
Where did you get those definitions from? Why should we accept them?
Because I can say right now, if your definition of “physicalism” holds, I am not a physicalist. Not that I thought I was to start with.