BIGGER THAN PHIL: When did faith start to fade?

And here we arrive at what the noes, whatever their numbers, really have now, and that is a monopoly on legitimate forms of knowledge about the natural world. They have this monopoly for the same reason that computer manufacturers have an edge over crystal-ball makers: the advantages of having an actual explanation of things and processes are self-evident. What works wins. We know that men were not invented but slowly evolved from smaller animals; that the earth is not the center of the universe but one among a billion planets in a distant corner; and that, in the billions of years of the universe’s existence, there is no evidence of a single miraculous intercession with the laws of nature. We need not imagine that there’s no Heaven; we know that there is none, and we will search for angels forever in vain. A God can still be made in the face of all that absence, but he will always be chairman of the board, holding an office of fine title and limited powers.

Linkey

This article seems to capsulize much of what we’ve been discussing. Everything from evolution and scientism to atheism and creationism.

 

 

97 thoughts on “BIGGER THAN PHIL: When did faith start to fade?

  1. Alan Fox,

    Even Hawking admits that the fine tuning evidence appears to indicate a deliberate intelligence setting scores of physical constants at very precise values.

    This is what is so bizarre: even the appeal to infinite universes doesn’t relieve the issue (because whatever is generating those infinite universes itself must be finely tuned in order to be capable of generating a universe such as ours even if it takes trillions of tries to do so) and creates a self-defeating scenario (where the universe-producing mechanism creates a god-universe) and infinitely more viable explanations for what we observe (Boltzmann Brains).

    The most efficient answer to the fine-tuning issue is not invoking infinite universes, some of which would be god-universes anyway; the most efficient answer is that an intelligence deliberately set the values at those fine-tuned constants.

  2. Alan Fox:
    But how do you justify “fine tuning” as evidence for gods? There’s a leap of imagination there that’s unwarranted. The observed universe appears (fill in blank) therefore gods. Don’t see it.

    The “fine tuning of the universe parameters is evidence for God (or a god)” perspective has always seemed completely illogical to me. From my perspective, an untuned universe with intelligent life (or really any life) would be much more likely an indicator of some external influence than a fine tuned one. Why? Because an untuned universe would require some type of miracle to bring about life. Life as a product of a universe for which there are life-sustaining parameters is just consistent.

    Now some folks may wonder why we have a universe tuned for the type of life we have in the first place, but leaping from that to the assumption of a god is just a variation of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

  3. William J. Murray: Even Hawking admits that the fine tuning evidence appears to indicate a deliberate intelligence setting scores of physical constants at very precise values.

    Citation, please. And no quote mining!

  4. Robin: Now some folks may wonder why we have a universe tuned for the type of life we have in the first place, but leaping from that to the assumption of a god is just a variation of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

    Indeed, the apparent “finely tuned” state of the universe is one thing. “Therefore God” needs work. 😉

  5. William J. Murray:
    Alan Fox,

    Even Hawking admits that the fine tuning evidence appears to indicate a deliberate intelligence setting scores of physical constants at very precise values.

    I do not think Hawking admits such any more (if he ever did):
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-giberson-phd/hawkings-speculation-ever_b_703374.html

    If all these many universes exist, then one mystery of our universe is dispelled — the so-called “fine-tuning” puzzle. Our universe is unexpectedly hospitable to life, a fact that many have suggested provides support for belief in a purposeful Creator. But, if all possible universes exist, then of course one will be like this one. We do know that this one is “possible” since it is “actual.”

  6. Alan Fox,

    Where did I say that Hawking admitted that ” that fine tuning is a coherent argument for god”?

    Hawking:

    “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

    Hawking makes the case in “The Grand Design” that M-theory explains why our Universe is so finely-tuned (essentially, there are infinite universes) – and so it is not necessary to invoke god. This implies that without M-theory or some alternate explanation, “God” would be a necessary explanation.

    The only thing I said about Hawking was that he admitted that it appears to be designed (which he claims M-theory would account for); but here Hawking implicitly holds God as potentially a necessary explanation.

  7. Robin,

    Your quote is an implicit admission of the very thing I said! There is no need for M-Theory if there is no apparent fine-tuning for life, or if there is no question why there is something other than nothing. What do you think it means for Hawking to admit that the universe is “unexpectedly” hospitable for life?

    Who finds it “unexpected”? IDists? Creationists? Why would science find it “unexpected”? What did science, which only serves to generate models of material behavior, “expect” to find?

    Obviously, that the universe is fine-tuned for life is only “unexpected” if one holds a metaphysical position that we shouldn’t find it to be fine-tuned in the first place. Science makes no such prediction; only ideological assumption makes such a prediction. M-theory and The Grand Design are only attempts by Hawking to salvage atheism/materialism as intellectually fulfilling in the face of contradictory evidence – the fine-tuning evidence.

  8. William J. Murray: If an intelligent agency was not a significant hypothesis to explain that fine-tuning

    You mean like your explanation of how the cell came into being?

    “It was designed by an intelligent designer”.

    I’d imagine you have little to add other then

    “The universe was fine tuned by a designer”.

    Tell you what, let’s investigate for, say, another 1000 years. If at that point we get nowhere we can just give up and say “it was designed”, like you’ve already given up and said. In fact, that’s where you started from – your conclusion.

  9. William J. Murray: M-theory and The Grand Design are only attempts by Hawking to salvage atheism/materialism as intellectually fulfilling in the face of contradictory evidence – the fine-tuning evidence.

    Perhaps you’d care to explain this ‘evidence’ and how it supports your claim?

  10. “Yet the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.”

    Which implies a need before “the latest advances in cosmology” to posit a god. BTW, as far as I know there is no evidence for those “latest advances in cosmology” (if that’s what we’re calling Hawking’s M-theory, which I don’t find much support for) other than the fine-tuning evidence itself.

    These are all de facto admissions that the universe appears to be fine-tuned for life (which is what I said), and that because of this, those that find this evidence to be inconsistent with their a priori ideological views attempt to construct models that explain the evidence some other way –

    even if it includes invoking an infinite number of necessary entities (universes) to account for that evidence other than by invoking a god;

    even if the invocation of those countless other necessary entities include universes that have an intelligent god deliberately orchestrating the natural laws to create life;

    even if it means that whatever is creating such universes necessarily creates more problems than solutions (Boltzmann Brains) and

    even if it means that whatever is creating those universes must itself be finely tuned to even be capable of producing such a universe in the first place.

    The theory that our universe is deliberately, finely tuned by a creator god for life is the most efficient explanation, because the other explanations multiply the necessary entities beyond what is required (and beyond what is reasonable) for no reason other than to satisfy atheistic ideology.

  11. William,

    I wonder if I should start looking back through past posts here to see who admitted that it is possible that god exists?

    Of course it’s possible. It’s also possible that the Easter Bunny exists, and that Donald Trump is secretly the president of the US.

    If Gopnik says he “knows” that Trump isn’t the POTUS, will you blast his claims as “irresponsible” and “unsupportable”?

  12. IOW, Hawking and other ideologically-committed physicists will appeal to “infinite universes” generated “out of nothing” and all of the problems, inconsistencies and inefficiencies such a hypothesis results in for no reason other than to avoid what they admit the fine-tuning evidence indicates for our universe: god.

    At least Antony Flew could explicitly admit that the evidence at hand indicates a god of some sort created the universe and faced up to that evidence. Hawking, on the other hand, will offer up what is no more than a modern myth of infinite chance dressed up as “science” in order to avoid what he implicitly admits is evidence indicating god.

  13. William J. Murray: IOW, Hawking and other ideologically-committed physicists will appeal to “infinite universes” generated “out of nothing” and all of the problems, inconsistencies and inefficiencies such a hypothesis results in for no reason other than to avoid what they admit the fine-tuning evidence indicates for our universe: god.

    Or, perhaps, you are unable to understand what they are actually saying and interpret it as you see fit.

    Where do you get off calling Hawking an “ideologically-committed physicist”? What’s your evidence for that claim? Put up or shut up.

  14. William J. Murray: Hawking, on the other hand, will offer up what is no more than a modern myth of infinite chance dressed up as “science” in order to avoid what he implicitly admits is evidence indicating god.

    Have you read his latest work? Where do you think he makes his first mistake?

    If you are unable to answer this simple question perhaps you should stop talking about what Hawking thinks?

  15. Seems to me a seeker of truth who comes up with truths that William does not like is an idealogue, whereas those who give the ‘right’ answers (according to William) are to be believed without question.

    Apparently the origin of the universe has been solved – it was design!

    But from whence cometh said designer? I would imagine to William et al thats irrelevant, he’s happy with that.

  16. William J. Murray:
    Robin,

    Your quote is an implicit admission of the very thing I said! There is no need for M-Theory if there is no apparent fine-tuning for life, or if there is no question why there is something other than nothing.What do you think it means for Hawking to admit that the universe is “unexpectedly”hospitable for life?

    Unexpectedly hospitable for life is not synonymous with a creator. Hawking notes such. You’re committing the fallacy that so many creationists commit: a false dichotomy by way of assuming that the default null hypothesis for any explanation is God. That’s just begging the question to say nothing of bad theology and bad science.

    BTW, Hawking has never said life was unexpected. That’s Karl Giberson’s statement, though he is certainly not alone in thinking such.

    Who finds it “unexpected”?IDists? Creationists? Why would science find it “unexpected”? What did science, which only serves to generate models of material behavior, “expect” to find?

    Geez William…why not just read an astronomy or physics book? Many scientists (along with many theists for that matter) state that given how universes develop, life is an unusual phenomenon. But then so is supernova level fusion producing heavy elements. Neither necessitates any divine intervention however.

    Obviously, that the universe is fine-tuned for life is only “unexpected” if one holds a metaphysical position that we shouldn’t find it to be fine-tuned in the first place.

    Umm…no…it does not require such a metaphysical position so much as an advanced understanding of the processes under which universes develop. But then, you freely admit that’s not your area of interest, so I suppose I should not be surprised that you don’t really understand either Hawking or Giberson points.

    Science makes no such prediction; only ideological assumption makes such a prediction.M-theory and The Grand Design are only attempts by Hawking to salvage atheism/materialism as intellectually fulfilling in the face of contradictory evidence – the fine-tuning evidence.

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! William, you should actually spend a little more time reading Hawking and a little less time projecting your own insecurities and irrationalities on to him.

  17. William J. Murray: Hawking makes the case in “The Grand Design” that M-theory explains why our Universe is so finely-tuned (essentially, there are infinite universes) – and so it is not necessary to invoke god. This implies that without M-theory or some alternate explanation, “God” would be a necessary explanation.

    Emphasis added.
    This is correct. But when you elide from this to

    Hawking implicitly holds God as potentially a necessary explanation.

    You have committed a rather obvious error in logic, the fallacy of the inverse.
    Multiverse => no need for God
    does NOT imply
    No Multiverse => need for God

  18. William J. Murray:
    Alan Fox,

    Where did I say that Hawking admitted that ” that fine tuning is a coherent argument for god”?

    Where did I say you did? I asked, “Just out of curiosity, does William have a reference to Hawking “admitting” that fine tuning is a coherent argument for some god or other?”

    Then you produce a quote from Hawking. What page of “The Grand Design” is it on, by the way? I have the book by me and I’d like to check the context.

    “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

    William continues:

    Hawking makes the case in “The Grand Design” that M-theory explains why our Universe is so finely-tuned (essentially, there are infinite universes) – and so it is not necessary to invoke god.This implies that without M-theory or some alternate explanation, “God” would be a necessary explanation.

    The only thing I said about Hawking was that he admitted that it appears to be designed (which he claims M-theory would account for); but here Hawking implicitly holds God as potentially a necessary explanation.

    I notice you omitted to repeat “deliberately”. That of course suggests something or somebody did it.
    And I echo OM in calling you on smearing Hawking without even the excuse of having read him (quote-mines excepted).

  19. William, IDists

    What, if anything, does ID (as practised at UD so IDC too) predict about dark matter?

    Show Hawking how an ID perspective is more productive!

  20. You’re committing the fallacy that so many creationists commit: a false dichotomy by way of assuming that the default null hypothesis for any explanation is God. That’s just begging the question to say nothing of bad theology and bad science.

    Except I offered no dichotomy of any sort. I never said that god was a default hypothesis. Those are all your inventions and the inventions of others here.

    The default position is always “I don’t know.” Without evidence of any sort, all we can say is “I don’t know”. There are facts which are the values of material and force constants. That these are what they are – integrated and apparently calibrated in concert to have a universe that can support life – these facts can be interpreted in favor of a designing intelligence. This is something Hawking (and others) implicitly admit and Flew (and others) explicitly admit.

    That doesn’t mean that god is the default explanation, or part of a dichotomy between god and the multiverse. It just means that the evidence supports (not proves) the god hypothesis. It might support any number of non-god hypothesises as well – but, as far as I know, the only two other theories to tackle it is the Wheeler model where our minds create the universe retroactively, and various multiverse theories.

  21. So, what this line of discussion started from is the question of whether or not there is empirical, scientific evidence for god; the answer is yes, and is explicitly or implicitly admitted as such by many in the scientific and even atheistic community. That evidence doesn’t prove god, and that evidence can be interpreted other ways I’m sure. That doesn’t change the fact that it can be interpreted in support of a god via the fine-tuning argument.

    So, one can say that the fine-tuning evidence isn’t convincing, but they cannot (rationally) say it doesn’t exist or that it cannot be reasonably interpreted to indicate the existence of a fine-tuning intelligence.

  22. The other night, I was turning over in my head the question, “why does the cosmos have the right physical parameters for the emergence of water-dependent, carbon-based life-forms?” and I realized that I just don’t care about the answer. Infinitely many universes or a infinite and creative Mind — I just don’t feel particularly compelled in either direction. So perhaps I am, at least at the theoretical level, an agnostic. At any rate I think it’s a leap of faith either way — both atheism and theism call for a ‘leap of faith,’ and I very much doubt that any argument compels us one way or the other. (Not even the appeal to Occam’s Razor.)

    But all this is completely irrelevant to the point that Gopnik is making. As I read his article, the really interesting thing isn’t whether or not God is posited (or presupposed) by our best scientific theories, but rather that more and more people are simply doing without religion: that we find a wholly secular way of life intellectually coherent and existentially fulfilling. (We do not even share Sartre’s lament, if it was a lament, that he has a God-shaped hole in his consciousness.)

  23. William J. Murray: Except I offered no dichotomy of any sort. I never said that god was a default hypothesis. Those are all your inventions and the inventions of others here.

    The default position is always “I don’t know.”Without evidence of any sort, all we can say is “I don’t know”.

    “God,” whatever that word may mean to the person who invokes it, is a cultural invention that replaces “I don’t know.”

    If “God” were an hypothesis, it would have entailments, it would make predictions, it would be testable. “God” is empirically useless. It is no explanation at all beyond “We don’t know.”

  24. No, Pedant. “God” doesn’t = “I don’t know.” God is used where the evidence or argument indicates some commodity is required that appears god-like. It would require, from our perspective, god-like power and intelligence to engineer a finely-tuned universe. And that is one thing (even if not the only thing) the evidence indicates – god-like intelligence and engineering ability.

  25. William J. Murray,

    The most efficient answer to the fine-tuning issue is not invoking infinite universes, some of which would be god-universes anyway;

    Whaaat? Just because everything that can happen would be represented in infinite universes (an idea I’m not sold on, incidentally) does not mean that anything you can imagine will happen. Universes with precisely reversed entropic change, for example, or those in which matter comes from thought, do not become more likely siimply because there are lots of ’em.

    the most efficient answer is that an intelligence deliberately set the values at those fine-tuned constants.

    Because that’s the thing about intelligence; it just kind of knows what to do, and always gets it spot on.

    A mental dusting of the hands, and WJM moves onto solving the next Great Question of Existence. I wonder what the answer to that one will be? I can hardly wait.

  26. William,

    So, what this line of discussion started from is the question of whether or not there is empirical, scientific evidence for god;

    No, it started when you leveled this accusation against Gopnik:

    We “know” there is no heaven? We “know” man evolved without a plan? Nobody with any intellectual honesty would make such irresponsible, unsupportable claims.

    I repeat my question:

    If Gopnik says he “knows” that Trump isn’t the POTUS, will you blast his claims as “irresponsible” and “unsupportable”?

  27. William J. Murray:
    IOW,Hawking and other ideologically-committed physicists will appeal to “infinite universes” generated “out of nothing” and all of the problems, inconsistencies and inefficiencies such a hypothesis results in for no reason other than to avoid what they admit the fine-tuning evidence indicates for our universe: god.

    Total and absolute wishful thinking.

    First of all you are assuming these people are “ideologically committed”. Second, noone’s appealing to “infinite universes”, generated “out of nothing” or not. Third, there are no inconsistencies or inefficiencies in these hypotheses (at least, you have not argued the point, simply asserted it).

    Fourth, you’re assuming the reason they’re coming up with multiverse models is “to avoid that fine-tuning indicates god”. This one is trivially false. First of all, many contemporary cosmological models predict multiverses. Not as a matter of trying to solve fine tuning, but simply as a consequence of their properties.

    Fifth: Fine tuning does not imply god, among other reasons because there’s noone who knows how a completely different set of laws and constants would affect another universe based on that set. We simply have no idea about the total range possible combinations that allow life.

    Sixth: Fine-tuning arguments assume that life is somehow intrinsically special. As if universes with different laws and constants, without life, would NOT require THAT set of constants and laws to be “fine tuned”. Fine-tuning have this hidden assumption about the specialness of life.

    Any concievable collection of constants out of the total space of possibilities would be equally unlikely. There’s nothing intrinsically more demanding of an explanation for a univers that contains our kind of life, than any other concievable collection of constant that would give rise to some other structure contingent on those constants. Whatever specific distribution would be, would be incalculably improbable. Why then think this one is special?

    For example, we could ask, what would a universe look like without “fine tuned constants” for carbon chemistry? Maybe one of those constants is slightly different and elements can’t get heavier than aluminum. No carbon chemistry, no life like ours(or maybe no life at all). Maybe gravity is also stronger? So planets get substantially larger than earth on average. Stars get bigger and hotter, die earlier. Most produce neutron stars, many black holes. Maybe there’s no weak force, so there’s no radioactive decay? But in such a universe, whatever it contains would still be contingent on that universe’s set of constants. It quickly becomes obvious that there’s no concievable universe that wouldn’t somehow itself be, or it’s constituents be contingent on the range of it’s constants. They’d all be “just so specifically the way they are” when it’s much much more probable that they could have been different.

    That means in order to think our universe is “special” because it has life in it, you must already assume that “life” is specially demanding of explanations where a universe containing barren rocks without carbon chemistry(or whatever kind of unimaginable structures and processes a different set of constants would result in) is not. How did you arrive at this conclusion without begging the question, that life is more special than other “special” conditions and therefore demand more special explanations?

    Look at it this way. There is only one Mt. Everest in the entire universe. Think about how many atoms Mt. Everest is made of, how they are all arranged exactly the way they are into the shape it has. All it’s cracks, faults, peaks, valleys, whatever countless miniscule surface features, texture, hardness etc. etc. Every cubic millimetre of that entire mountain from it’s core and foundation to it’s surface and peak. Made of rock, which consists of atoms, incomprehensible number of atoms arranged into it’s particular shape and structure. Any one particular atom could be in a different place. Any imaginable different place. But they aren’t, they’re part of the Mt. Everest, and not just arbitrarily, but they each have some particular and exact position. Litterally unique. Chance can’t have produced it, it’s too unlikely.
    Are we now to believe the Mt. Everest was intentionally designed. Are we now to believe the universe was made with the specific intent of making the Mt. Everest?

    Notice how you can make the exact same argument for anything that exists. Any particular rock, or leaf, or cloud, mountain, body of water, is exactly the way it is. The odds that anything would happen to be exactly like the way it is, sometime before it formed, is incalculably improbable.

    The same would be true for any concievable universe too. Even the ones that rip apart and collapse in on themselves. Given their unique set of constants and starting conditions, they’d collapse in on themselves in a way that is unique to that set of constants and starting conditions. “That could not have happened by chance – it would be much more likely that it happened in another way”.

    William J. Murray: At least Antony Flew could explicitly admit that the evidence at hand indicates a god of some sort created the universe and faced up to that evidence.Hawking, on the other hand, will offer up what is no more than a modern myth of infinite chance dressed up as “science” in order to avoid what he implicitly admits is evidence indicating god.

    Anthony Flew was pretty much senile when he was duped by extremely dishonest religious apologists into accepting to pseudo-coauthor a book full of propositions he’d spend a lifetime refuting.

    Ignore the malware warning on that site, there is none.

  28. William J. Murray:
    No, Pedant. “God” doesn’t = “I don’t know.” God is used where the evidence or argument indicates some commodity is required that appears god-like.

    When you tell me what “God” means other than a “commodity” that is required by your preconceptions, I will reconsider.

    It would require, from our perspective, god-like power and intelligence to engineer a finely-tuned universe.And that is one thing (even if not the only thing) the evidence indicates – god-like intelligence and engineering ability.

    You’re a fountain of preconceptions and prejudices, William. Your “perspective” is archaic and idiosyncratic.


  29. If you say the universe was made 6,000 years ago, or that the Earth sits of the back of giant turtle and flies through space, you are simply wrong. If you say a god made the universe to look exactly as we know it to be, there is no evidence of this god or how it did it. The statement can not be tested or verifed. Science has nothing to say on the matter.

    ….

    To say your idea of a god or goddess created the universe is a theological assertion. Depending of the details, if they are vague enough not to conflict with the known scientific facts, then there are near infinite variations of supernatural assertions that have no evidence for what or how. These beliefs may satisfy the believers but they don’t actually help us understand what really happened.

    You can define something as an eternal, immaterial, powerful intelligence as a solution. You can even say it didn’t need a cause or to be created. You could say it has the spiritual form of a squid. But a definition without any proof is not an explanation. You can call it Allah, Yahweh or George and believe it revealed itself to this or that prophet. Not all of these beliefs can be correct. We can not tell which is right because it is all speculative subjective waffle. But they could all be wrong.

    A god could have created the universe. But for now we don’t know and have no way of knowing. Its an untestable idea that explains nothing really.

    http://www.ted.com/conversations/13213/does_the_god_hypothesis_have_a.html

  30. keiths:

    [William]

    So, what this line of discussion started from is the question of whether or not there is empirical, scientific evidence for god;

    No, it started when you leveled this accusation against Gopnik:

    We “know” there is no heaven? We “know” man evolved without a plan? Nobody with any intellectual honesty would make such irresponsible, unsupportable claims.

    I repeat my question:

    If Gopnik says he “knows” that Trump isn’t the POTUS, will you blast his claims as “irresponsible” and “unsupportable”?

    Yes, this.

    Actually, our boy Bill’s misconduct is worse than you’re calling him on.

    Gopnick does say “we know there is none [heaven]” but NEVER says “we evolved without a plan“.

    He specifically states that we know:

    men were not invented but slowly evolved

    “Not invented but slowly evolved” is NOT at all the same as “without a plan” no matter how much Billy boy wants to claim they must be equivalent, because materialism, or rhetoric, or whatever.

    It’s just another one of his horrible sloppy/stupid/something misbehaviors.

  31. One might be tempted to go Neoplatonic here and say that God is the ultimate explanation, the ground of being, or the source of all intelligibility. One might say that God is that necessary being who makes possible all contingent beings.

    I have no objection to such expressions — they are preferred by religious liberals, with whom I have a great deal in common, and several of whom are my friends and colleagues. But it is worth pointing out that the more Neoplatonic the conception of God becomes, the harder it is to reconcile with any appeal to Scripture as a source of epistemic or ethical authority.

    And while there is much to be said in favor of a life informed by spirituality, spirituality is by itself no guarantee of moral goodness (insert your preferred example here), nor does spirituality seem to be required for moral goodness (insert your preferred example here).

    As the Reform Jewish prayerbook says, “godlessness leads not to badness, but only to an incurable loneliness.” Some of us find that cosmic loneliness — that we do not find a Presence at work in the most fundamental structures of reality — eminently bearable.

  32. Kantian Naturalist:
    Some of us find that cosmic loneliness — that we do not find a Presence at work in the most fundamental structures of reality — eminently bearable.

    That’s because we have each other.

  33. hotshoe,

    I disagree; I think Gopnik just takes it for granted that macroevolution is unguided. I don’t think it’s unwarranted for William to interpret Gopnik as saying that there’s no empirical basis for accepting teleological macroevolution.

  34. In just over a week’s time we will be able to hear Physicist Sean Carroll v the professional debater WLC. I don’t expect WLC to make the slightest headway because the debate topic is firmly on Carroll’s terms.

    Dr Carroll will take the view that the universe is dysteleological. This is the only thing WLC will be able to attack without being schooled. Carroll will be prepared for this. It will be worth listening to the actual explanations of a (philosophically literate) cosmologist regarding teleology.

    Incidentally, if anyone enjoys Craig having his sophist ass handed to him, google William Lane Craig v Bradley. Available as an mp3. Bradley rips apart the notion that a benevolent omnipotent god must send people to hell.

  35. Kantian Naturalist:
    hotshoe,

    I disagree; I think Gopnik just takes it for granted that macroevolution is unguided.I don’t think it’s unwarranted for William to interpret Gopnik as saying that there’s no empirical basis for accepting teleological macroevolution.

    I think it’s reasonable to infer that Gopnick believes “slowly evolved” is equivalent to “unguidedly evolved” and that in turn is equivalent to “evolved without a plan or a designer’s endpoint in view’. Yes, reasonable, but that’s not what Billy boy does; as usual he argues against a specific statement which no one has actually made, as if his inference/subtext-reading is indeed textual fact when it’s not. It’s bad behavior. This isn’t college film class and if WJM wants to argue about a subtext which he perceives (which may or may not be valid) then he needs to explicitly connect the dots rather than, literally, put dialog in someone’s mouth which has not been said.
    And in the same paragraph about which WJM is ranting, Gopnick goes on to make it clear that someone (maybe not himself personally, but certainly some people) could believe in a director-of-creative-services god;

    A God can still be made in the face of all that absence, but he will always be chairman of the board, holding an office of fine title and limited powers.

    There’s sufficient room in that office for directing “teleological macroevolution.” So as usual, our boy Bill is spectacularly missing the point.

    Our boy doesn’t just think Gopnik is wrong to accept the appearance of slow evolution, he rants:

    Nobody with any intellectual honesty would make such irresponsible, unsupportable claims.

    HIs whole comment was unwarranted, the slur about “honesty” most of all, and especially when he himself was not engaging with Gopnik’s text as – honestly – written.

  36. William J. Murray: Except I offered no dichotomy of any sort. I never said that god was a default hypothesis. Those are all your inventions and the inventions of others here.

    The problem is, “God” is not an hypothesis at all.

    The default position is always “I don’t know.”Without evidence of any sort, all we can say is “I don’t know”.

    This I agree with. If you and all other creationists would stop here, you’d be fine.

    There are facts which are the values of material and force constants.That these are what they are – integrated and apparently calibrated in concert to have a universe that can support life – these facts can be interpreted in favor of a designing intelligence.

    This is just begging the question by way of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Once again, for some odd reason you seem to think that a universe with a narrow set of parameters that supports life implies intention. Why? There’s no analogy to anything man can do and there isn’t any inherent connection between narrow parameters and intent. Thus, the only reasonable explanation for such an assumption is a faith-based acceptance of a possibility of some intention. But such can only be an assumption – the mere fact of given parameters is not, in and of itself, an indicator of intelligence. Ergo – circular thinking.

    This is something Hawking (and others) implicitly admit and Flew (and others) explicitly admit.

    Incorrect. Hawking merely notes that others – like you – have tried to assume a connection and that he can understand why such folks see such a connection. He is quite up front about the fact that he does not see such a connection however and that his research dispenses with any need for such a connection.

    That doesn’t mean that god is the default explanation, or part of a dichotomy between god and the multiverse.It just means that the evidence supports (not proves) the god hypothesis. It might support any number of non-god hypothesises as well – but, as far as I know, the only two other theories to tackle it is the Wheeler model where our minds create the universe retroactively, and various multiverse theories.

    Any evidence supports a supposed “god hypothesis”. Hence the reason that god is not actually a valid hypothesis.

  37. Gregory,

    Since (as you know) I have a very low opinion of Dawkins, I’m not exactly thrilled to be associated with him here.

    The crux of the problem is that you assume that the way I want to live is the same as how I want everyone else to live. And that’s utterly, completely false. The fact that I am perfectly happy with a wholly secular way of life does not mean that I want everyone else to give up religion and embrace secularism. On the contrary — I think that that would be a disaster. I think that religion is fantastic. It’s just not for me, and for people like me. So I want to defend my right to be secular, but the exercise of that right does not infringe upon the right of anyone else to practice their religion within agreed-upon limits.

    So, then, the question is, what are the limits of religious practice in social, shared spaces that people of faith and secularists can agree upon? And to that question, I think that Habermas offers a very promising view.

  38. A great follow-up would be to limit professional politicians to a few terms, and to ban former office holders from lobbying.

    I think the greatest structural problem in government is that government office holders and employees have found ways to insulate themselves from their own laws and regulations.

  39. petrushka:
    A great follow-up would be to limit professional politicians to a few terms, and to ban former office holders from lobbying.

    Definitely. In the UK upper house they take their seats for life!

  40. William,

    Regarding your misquote of Hawking and Mlodinow, I see a parallel discussion at Uncommon Descent. Note how the commenter, Roy, points out that a citation should refer to the source of the quote. So when you found your truncated version of what Hawking and Mlodinow wrote, it would have been correct to cite the secondary source you used which reproduced (inaccurately) the original source.

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