Over at Evolution News, mathematician Granville Sewell has written an article titled, From Barren Planet to Civilization — Four Simple Steps (July 27, 2017). My intention in writing this post is not to critique Dr. Sewell’s latest argument, but to clarify its premises. Sewell’s own comments reveal that it is ultimately a philosophical argument, rather than a scientific one. Although I agree with Dr. Sewell’s key intuition, I contend that his argument hinges on two assumptions: that unguided processes have a snowball’s chance in hell of giving rise to factories, and that mental states do not supervene upon physical states.
The bulk of this post will be devoted to what Dr. Sewell has written in his latest Evolution News article. At the end of my post, I will briefly comment on the thermodynamic arguments in his accompanying video, which I see as peripheral to Sewell’s main point.
I’d like to begin by quoting from the first, second and last paragraphs of Sewell’s article:
In the video “Why Evolution is Different,” above, I make the simple point that to not believe in intelligent design, you have to believe that the four fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone (the gravitational, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces) could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into encyclopedias and science texts and computers and airplanes and Apple iPhones. I show that this belief runs contrary to the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, even if the Earth is an open system.
Whether or not it has anything to do with the second law, I can’t imagine anything in all of science that is more clear and more obvious than that unintelligent forces alone cannot produce such things as Apple iPhones.…
Mathematicians are trained to value simplicity. When we have a clear, simple, proof of a theorem, and a long, complicated counterargument, involving controversial and unproven assertions, we accept the clear, simple, proof, and we know there must be errors in the counterargument even before we find them. The argument here for intelligent design could not be simpler or clearer: unintelligent forces of physics alone cannot rearrange atoms into computers and airplanes and Apple iPhones.…
By his own admission, Dr. Sewell’s argument rests on a simple intuition, that unintelligent forces of physics alone cannot rearrange fundamental particles into science texts and computers. Although Sewell maintains that the second law of thermodynamics prevents the four fundamental forces of physics from rearranging fundamental particles into science texts and computers all by themselves, he insists that his intuition is clear and obvious, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the second law. Since Sewell’s intuition does not appeal to any mathematical reasoning to justify it, and the intuition is couched in non-mathematical language, it is evident that we are not dealing with a mathematical claim here. Nor can it be called a scientific claim, as key terms are left undefined: what is it, exactly, that the four fundamental forces of physics are incapable of rearranging fundamental particles into? Machines, texts or both? Additionally, the only scientific law which Sewell appeals to, in order to support his claim, is one which he says intuition does not require, anyway, in order to grasp its truth.
What does Dr. Sewell mean?
I take it, then, that Sewell’s fundamental intuition is a philosophical one. As a philosopher, I find it somewhat ambiguously worded, in that it fails to distinguish between proximate and ultimate causation. Sewell’s claim could mean either:
1. Science texts and computers can never have, as their proximate cause, the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance
or:
2. Science texts and computers can never have, as their ultimate cause, the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance.
But we are not finished yet. Although Dr. Sewell claims in his article that “unintelligent forces of physics alone cannot rearrange atoms into computers and airplanes and Apple iPhones” (my emphasis), he does not literally mean this. As he explains in an earlier post from 2012, what he actually means is that such an outcome would be “astronomically improbable.” So what Sewell really means to say is either
1(a) It is astronomically improbable that science texts and computers would have, as their proximate cause, the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance
or
2(a) It is astronomically improbable that science texts and computers would have, as their ultimate cause, the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance.
Now, even opponents of Intelligent Design would readily agree with Sewell that claim 1(a) is true. In the real world, science books are always written by scientists, and computers are always built by computer engineers. In both cases, the proximate cause is an intelligent agent. (A robot can build a computer, but it still has to be designed by an intelligent agent.) We never see science texts and computers being put together by the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles. While it’s theoretically possible for the four forces of nature to assemble particles into texts and computers, the odds are so low that we would never expect to witness such an event. So I can only assume that Dr. Sewell means to assert claim 2(a). Sewell confirms this interpretation in his latest article, where he states that materialists attempt to explain the origin of advanced civilizations from inanimate matter, in four steps:
1. Three or four billion years ago a collection of atoms formed by pure chance that was able to duplicate itself. [Life]
2. These complex collections of atoms were able to preserve their complex structures and pass them on to their descendants, generation after generation. [Reproduction and heredity]
3. Over a long period of time, the accumulation of duplication errors resulted in more and more elaborate collections of atoms. [“Higher” animals]
4. Eventually something called “intelligence” [i.e. human beings] allowed some of these collections of atoms to design buildings and computers and airplanes, and write encyclopedias and science texts.
In step 4, Sewell acknowledges that even materialists posit something called “intelligence” as the proximate cause of computers and science texts. What distinguishes materialists from Intelligent Design theorists, according to Sewell, is that the latter would deny that the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance, are the ultimate cause of these remarkable artifacts.
Sewell contends that each of these steps is very difficult to explain scientifically. The origin of life (step 1) is “a very difficult problem which has not yet been solved by science.” Reproduction (step 2) is “difficult to explain without design,” especially when the new entity being constructed is one which has to contain a factory for building yet another entity like itself. The bodies of higher animals (step 3) contain major new features, whose sudden appearance and subsequent refinement “actually looks more like the way human technology, such as software or automobiles, ‘evolves,’ through testing and improvements.” And while the process whereby humans design science texts and computers (step 4) might seem very familiar to us all, “science cannot yet explain human consciousness or intelligence in terms of unintelligent forces alone.”
Some readers might wish to question whether Sewell has an adequate grasp of evolutionary biology. However, as this post is intended to assess his philosophical reasoning, I shall overlook any scientific objections to Sewell’s argument, in his article. Instead, I’d like to focus on his key intuition. Sewell thinks it is clear and obvious that the probability of science texts and computers ultimately arising from the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance, is astronomically low. That is his central claim.
What is interesting here is that Sewell does not assert that it is intuitively obvious that the probability of life ultimately arising from the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance, is astronomically low. He regards the origin of life as “a very difficult problem,” but that’s a much weaker assertion than his central claim. Sewell also acknowledges that the origin of “higher” animals, and even “intelligent humans,” appears at least “superficially plausible (until we look at it in more detail).”
Getting to the roots of Sewell’s key intuition
As far as I can tell from reading his article, there are two classes of phenomena which Sewell regards as truly mysterious: reproduction and creativity – the former, because it involves not only copying something, but building a factory that can continue the chain of copying down through the generations; and the latter, because Sewell does not believe that human consciousness or intelligence can be explained in terms of blind forces.
I am curious to know which Sewell regards as more mysterious: reproduction or human creativity. Although he devotes two entire paragraphs of his article to the marvel of reproduction, I find it very strange that Sewell nowhere claims that it is obvious that the probability of, say, a lineage of bacteria ultimately arising from the four fundamental forces of physics, acting on elementary particles without any intelligent assistance, is astronomically low. And yet, if he regarded reproduction as the main hurdle rendering the unguided origin of science texts and computers from inanimate matter astronomically unlikely, that is precisely the sort of claim which one would expect him to make.
That leaves us with the mystery of human creativity. And indeed, there is something profoundly odd about the appearance of an animal whose mind enables it to explore the farthest recesses of time and space, and to solve any technological problem that the cosmos throws at it. How did a such a magnificent mind arise, in the first place?
A Darwinist might contend that if we examine the hominin fossil record and the tools made by our ancestors, we can discern no breaks that correspond to any sudden appearance of the human mind. As far as we can tell, the mind arose gradually, over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. Sewell might object that “science cannot yet explain human consciousness or intelligence in terms of unintelligent forces alone,” but Darwinists would call that an argument from ignorance. Or is it? Are there any good reasons to believe that blind forces cannot generate minds like ours?
A Thought Experiment
Instead of putting forward an argument for the immateriality of the mind which is based on Aristotelian metaphysics (as many Thomistic philosophers do), I’d like to cut to the chase with a thought experiment.
Imagine that you’re an astronaut, traveling in interstellar space in the 25th century, and that your spaceship has a super-duper computer. One day, you land on a planet and encounter a race of technologically advanced beings whose science is roughly on a par with your own. One of these beings kindly lets you scan its brain and body, allowing your on-board computer to construct a detailed model in its databank. You also observe the alien being very carefully, monitoring its verbal utterances and its brain waves whenever it communicates with other members of its race.
Now here’s my question for the materialists: do you think you would be able to reconstruct the alien’s thoughts and its language, simply by analyzing its brain waves and bodily behavior? After all, if the mind “supervenes upon” the body, as materialists love to claim, so that two intelligent entities having the same physical states will always have the same mental states, then it should be possible, in theory at least, to infer the latter from the former, given a powerful enough computer. If intelligent beings’ brain processes possess intentionality in their own right, then there is no reason in principle why we cannot “read off” the meaning of these brain processes at time T from their structure and/or the changes they are undergoing, at time T.
What’s more, it shouldn’t be necessary for us to know anything about the alien’s life-history, or the history of its species, in order to determine what it is thinking. For if the content of its thoughts supervenes upon what’s going on in its brain and body right now, as materialists suppose, then a complete knowledge of the alien’s current physical state (and its present surroundings) should be enough to tell us what’s going on in its mind. Otherwise, one might imagine a race of aliens on another planet, having identical brain processes, bodily states and immediate surroundings, but whose thoughts have a different content from those of the first race of aliens, because of different choices they made in the past – for instance, about the rules of their language. This would contradict the physicalist thesis of supervenience, that there can be no mental differences between two individuals without some underlying physical difference.
When my thought experiment is couched in this form, it becomes evident that the materialist’s claim that mental states (including our language and our most creative ideas) supervene upon physical states is highly implausible, and stands in need of justification. One would want to see very good evidence, before accepting such a sweeping claim. Of course, rejection of materialism doesn’t tell us what the mind is. Nor does it establish the truth of any particular version of dualism. One could still adopt some form of neutral monism, where mental and physical properties are regarded as existing side by side, in human beings and other intelligent organisms. But on such an account, the origin and existence of the mind would still remain a profound mystery.
If there is any truth to Sewell’s core intuition, then, it must rest on the materialist claim that mental states supervene upon physical states. The emergence of life, of reproduction and heredity, and of complex animals, are all very puzzling facts, in a world where unguided forces hold sway, but it is not obvious that these outcomes are astronomically improbable. But the origin of a mind which can ask and answer questions about where it – and everything else – came from, and that can solve any technological problem it sets itself, is something truly astonishing. The laws of physics simply express functional relationships between various physical properties; they say nothing about syntax, let alone the semantics of our language. Language is a wholly unexpected phenomenon in a world governed by blind forces. And so are those human creations, such as science texts and computers, which presuppose the existence of language. That, I would suggest, is what lies at the core of Sewell’s big claim.
What do readers think?
APPENDIX: Some remarks on Grant Sewell’s video
Sewell’s 22-minute video, titled, “Why Evolution Is Different,” is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEXXNxjWYE&feature=youtu.be
This video is more scientific and technical than Dr. Sewell’s article; consequently, my assessment of it will be quite different from my overall favorable assessment of the central claim of Sewell’s article.
I’ll keep my comments as brief as possible.
(1) At the beginning of the video, Sewell discusses Le Conte’s axiom: the four forces account for everything else in nature, so why should evolution be any different? For my part, I think Le Conte’s axiom is scientifically plausible, when one is discussing the physical properties of objects. But as we have seen, it is wildly implausible to suppose that the four forces can account for the appearance of human language. Syntax and semantics can’t be explained in terms of functional physical relationships, such as Hooke’s law. That’s why I think Sewell’s central claim is a valid one.
(2) At 5:09, we are told that in his published paper, On “compensating” entropy decreases (Physics Essays 30, 1 (2017), pp. 70-74), Dr. Sewell defined “X-entropy” as the entropy associated with any diffusing component (e.g. heat). And since entropy is a measure of disorder, he defined X-order as the negative of X-entropy. However, it’s a mistake to regard entropy as a measure of disorder (admittedly, it’s a common one in physics textbooks, which originally goes back to Ludwig Boltzmann). Steve Donaldson’s paper, Entropy is not Disorder, is well worth reading in this regard. I shall quote a few of the highlights:
So what is entropy? Probably the most common answer you hear is that entropy is a kind of measure of disorder. This is misleading. Equating entropy with disorder creates unnecessary confusion in evaluating the entropy of different systems. Consider the following comparisons. Which has more entropy?
– stack of cards in perfect order or a stack of cards in random order?
– a Swiss watch with intricate internal workings or a sundial?
– ten jars of water stacked neatly in a pyramid or the equivalent mass of water in the form of 10 blocks of ice flying randomly through space?
– a living, breathing human being or a dried up corpse turning to dust?
– the universe at the moment of the Big Bang or the universe in its present state?
If you think of entropy as disorder, then the answers to these questions may trouble you….A better word that captures the essence of entropy on the molecular level is diversity. Entropy represents the diversity of internal movement of a system. The greater the diversity of movement on the molecular level, the greater the entropy of the system. Order, on the other hand, may be simple or complex. A living system is complex. A living system has a high degree of order AND an high degree of entropy. A raccoon has more entropy than a rock. A living, breathing human being, more than a dried up corpse…
With this clearer understanding of entropy, let’s take a look at those troubling entropy questions posed earlier. Those stacks of cards? They both have the same entropy. On the molecular level, the molecules are not behaving any differently in one stack than in the other. Even on the card level, there is no difference. None of the cards are moving. There is no kinetic energy present on the card level in either stack. There is no difference between the stacks except our subjective sense of order.
As for the watch and the sundial, it depends. If they are both made of similar metals and they are at the same temperature and pressure, then on a molecular level they would have about the same entropy. The molecules in the watch would have about the same diversity of movement in the solid metal parts as the molecules in the metal of the sundial. Ounce for ounce, the heat content would be about the same for both.
On the higher system level, you could say the watch has more entropy than the sundial because it has a greater diversity of internal movement. The watch has more internal kinetic energy than the sundial. What significance you could give this “higher level” entropy is not clear to me.
The water in the stacked jars has more entropy than the flying ice cubes because liquid water molecules have more modes of movement than ice molecules. Again, the heat trapped in the liquid water per degree is greater than the heat trapped in the ice per degree…
…The 2nd law says entropy is always increasing in the universe, so the entropy of the universe at the time of the Big Bang must have been much less that the entropy of the universe now.
This does not mean there was more structure or order back then. It does mean there was less diversity and less space to move around. The evolution of the universe has been characterized by an on-going transformation from a simple, restricted, highly condensed, homogeneous state to an increasingly complex, widely dispersed, dynamic, multipotent, granular diversity. In other words, the universe is not winding down, like a giant soulless machine slowly running out of steam. On the contrary, she is just waking up. (Emphases mine – VJT.)
(3) Later, Dr. Sewell discusses the astronomical unlikelihood of a tornado turning all the houses and cars in an area into rubble, being followed by a second tornado which turns the rubble back into houses and cars. Sewell’s point is that unguided evolution is equally ridiculous. But the origin of life is completely different from a tornado turning a heap of rubble back into a house. In a living organism (e.g. a tiny bacterium), the constituent molecules show at least some tendency to bond together (although we still have no idea how the first organism was formed), and (usually) a very robust tendency to hold together, once assembled. The pieces of rubble from a house destroyed by a tornado show absolutely no tendency to come together again; nor would they show any tendency to hold together, even if they somehow managed to coalesce in some freak event. Also, a bacterium is very small, and a house is very big. From a purely thermodynamic point of view, assembling a house is a lot harder than assembling a bacterium. As for the subsequent evolution of more complex life-forms, Darwinian evolution (supplemented by the neutral theory) provide at least a mechanism whereby complex traits could evolve. No such mechanism exists for houses.
(4) Dr. Sewell contends that major transitions occur suddenly in the fossil record. Evidently he hasn’t read much about the evolution of mammals from mammal-like reptiles, or the origin of birds from dinosaurs, recently. Back in the 1980s, these transitions were still deeply puzzling (especially the latter). Not any longer.
(5) In his video, Sewell explains why the evolution of the automobile engine couldn’t have been natural. I’m sure it couldn’t: cars don’t have babies.
(6) Finally, Dr. Sewell argues that the evolution of life shows the same pattern of careful planning and gradual improvement as we observe in technological design. Convergence, he suggests, explains the similar structures which are sometimes found in different lineages of living things: Ford automobiles and Boeing jets may simultaneously evolve new GPS systems. OK, so here’s a question: why do we never see exactly the same complex structure appearing in different lineages of living things? (The vertebrate eye is not the same as that of the octopus.) This is odd, because human designers typically reuse their designs. And why do novel designs appearing in one branch of living things never appear at exactly the same time, in another branch, as occurred with GPS systems? That does not sound like technological design to me.
(7) Professsor Joe Felsenstein and Mark Perakh have responded to Dr. Sewell’s argument based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics here and here, respectively. I’ll leave it to readers to form their own judgement. Elsewhere, Felsenstein highlights what he sees as two key errors made by Dr. Sewell (emphases mine):
1. His X-entropies, even if the equations for them are correct, isolate the concentration of one quantity from all others, not allowing chemical or nuclear reactions to create or destroy the substance. For example, we could make an X-entropy for carbon dioxide. We could have equations for the changes in concentration of CO2, but these would not have terms for the creation of CO2 by respiration or by some geochemical processes, and they would not have terms for the destruction of CO2 by photosynthesis. So the equations can be correct but their application to the real world wrong.
2. Leaving aside the issue of X-entropies and just looking at the energy flows, Sewell wants to argue that his math shows that evolution cannot make organisms more complex and energy-rich. Here he gets very handwavy and vague, and that is telling. In fact he is ignoring the role of solar radiation in powering the processes in the biosphere. He just says that “all we see entering [the biosphere] is radiation” and expects his readers to dismiss the idea that this radiation could be important. In short, even if his equations are all correct, he has msiapplied them by ignoring a major fact explained in science classes.
Please note that I’m just passing on these comments; I’ll leave it to readers to elaborate on them.
(8) Dr. Sewell’s claim that you can calculate the entropy of a poker hand should be read in the light of Steve Donaldson’s explanation of why an ordered stack of cards has the same entropy as a randomly ordered stack (see above). Likewise, Sewell’s assertion that the Boltzmann formula can be used to calculate “the change in thermal entropy associated with any change in probability: not just the probability of an ideal gas state, but the probability of anything,” has been criticized as a sweeping generalization, which reflects a misunderstanding of Boltzmann’s work.
(9) Sal Cordova points out that not all creationists believe that the Second Law of Thermodynamics precludes the evolution of life.
I shall stop here, and invite readers to weigh in with their comments, both philosophical and scientific.
It is a good way of ignoring science questions.
So I guess that’s a plus for you.
Glen Davidson
But science tries to reduce observer bias as much as possible
They are fundamental but subservient to the outcome of experiments. Expectations are assumptions, some assumptions fail in the light of new knowledge. Eclipses are beyond ordinary expections if you have no knowledge of the movement of the Moon in relation to the Sun and Earth.
ID’s expectations seem to fall in the absolute proof or therefore design category
The belief that science is limited and provisional but seems very useful.
No, but no one compares the mechanisms of evolution to earthquakes or tornadoes with the exception of the act of procreation in humans.
…and Fred Hoyle…
That is because he did not believe in the Big Bang.
True.
I suppose technically I’m in error anyway since Hoyle did not invoke the tornado in comparison to evolutionary processes, but rather as a metaphor for improbability. Oh well…
I am sure that someone has at least indirectly
It’s good that you realize that you deserve every nasty thing your god dishes out.
Probably the comparison to known naturally occurring molecules which ordinary expections deem not intelligently designed. This seems unhelpful to your argument .
We agree to a point but the naturally occurring molecules may be just as complex or improbable but the ordinary expection is ,since they are naturally occurring ,the molecules are not intelligently designed.
He also said he is open to the possibility of an evolutionary origin. He seems not to have an ordinary expectation either way.
Which version of God ?
The existence of a deity is a separate issue from whether the structure of our universe can in itself result in biologic entities. Or to be even more precise whether once life exists whether evolution can result in the forms of life we see.
It would be if one knows why there is a gap.Is the gap the result of lack of complete knowledge or because the regularities of the Universe were suspended.
I think being convinced of the existence of some version of God is not the result of logic, it is the fulfillment of a need as result of a leap of faith. Logic may get you to a generic deity but to convinced of the particular requires faith
newton,
Or the answer lies outside the universe which creates great frustration for those trying to resolve the gap inside the universe. The gaps that science may never get to. I agree with your premise but I would be a little stronger that logic does point to a generic deity.
Every concept requires some leap of faith because all knowledge is tentative, however some more then others. To get from the generic deity to a more specific evidence based description of God you need to trust historic evidence. This is not purely faith based but a combination of faith and logic. I have recently come to believe that the historic evidence is stronger then I had previously assumed.
Or the answer lies with unicorns, which creates great frustration for those trying to resolve the gap outside of the universe (just kidding, you’re not concerned about the lack of explanatory value of your beliefs).
It points to generic unicorns. With equal evidential force.
I didn’t require faith to believe my eyes.
No, you need to learn how to honestly evaluate claims of historic evidence. One step you haven’t taken.
Ah yes, and you’ve shown a remarkable ability to doubt solid evidence, while hanging onto the flimsiest of excuses.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
Are you claiming expertise in this area?
Some, to be sure. I’ve had courses and independent study, learning enough Greek to at least understand what’s being discussed, so long as it’s in Greek.
Glen Davidson
OK, for those unable to read a few pages of my online text, I have extracted the relevant passage from the beginning of section II.2:
The rest of the section derives the formulas for the change of gene frequency as a function of the fitnesses
, and also introduces the ratios of fitnesses called relative fitnesses, which are what actually affect the gene frequencies.
The next section shows, for a model of overlapping generations in continuous times that the comparable roles are played by differences between birth and death rates, the intrinsic rates of increase. The section after that is for a diploid species with random mating. It makes the point that, if the fitnesses are functions of both genotypes in a mated pair, there may not be a simple fitness that you can attribute to a genotype (because it depends on who mates with who).
In those sections, I am being fairly bloody-mindedly precise, something I have not seen from the other side in this discussion.
GlenDavidson,
I have yet to see a competent argument that the historic evidence for the content of the new testament is false. Can you support this claim?
Oh yes, shift the burden away from the one claiming that the NT is true.
Give us evidence that it’s true. That’s what’s needed, not your endless defaults to worthless claims.
Glen Davidson
Perhaps or it could be more of the same.
Sure but we will be long gone unless you believe in reincarnation.Let the next owners worry about that.
Best logical argument is?
Which means you have to trust historians who have unknown access to the facts and unknown motivations toward the subject. And then you must trust the editors and their motivations. It takes a lot of faith to think that is specific evidence. But many do with different versions of God coming from the same sources.
Faith based logic but you may be right, so might the Jews and the Muslims,Buddhists and Rastafarians etc. It may just be the blind men with the elephant.
GlenDavidson,
I am not arguing here. I am interested in what you know about the validity of the NT.
newton,
The predictability of the universe-
The fact that anything in the universe can be built with atoms. Made up of 3 basic particle/wave groups (protons neutrons electrons)
The capability of atoms including organizing to create life.
The interaction of the mind and matter per the double slit experiment.
Do you trust the history of the life of Lincoln?
Oops.
I posted my most recent comment in this thread here, by mistake. Anyone commenting on it should do so in the “Eye Mock Stupidity” thread where I just reposted it.
If the resurrection doesn’t tip you off, it’s hardly worth discussing.
But sure, you didn’t make an argument here, just reiterated your meaningless claims. Why bother?
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
You’re disqualifying it based on the claim of an unusual event. Any thing else?
“Unusual” is perhaps the wrong word. “Implausible” would be better.
Let’s add the massacre of the innocents to the list. It’s not physically impossible, just humanly nonsensical. Though I do believe you’re on record as claiming that implausibilities and contradictions are good reasons to believe the stories.
Without a predictable Universe chances we would not exist, so we should expect a predictable universe if we exist even without a God. I think you would need to know the likelihood of a predictable Universe, I don’t see logically how you do that with a sample of one.
Would four or two basic particles disprove the existence of God? Seems like you are working back from conclusion.
If life did not consist of atoms would that be evidence against the existence of God? To me it would be better evidence for an immaterial being. Seems to me if the “not a ” and ” a” are both evidence for same thing it is unconvincing
Could you expand?
We have photographs, we have government papers, a diverse number of sources, none of which required to permission of the church to be included in the official story, so based on that I trust he existed.
As shown in the other discussions on this topic, no one has yet provided any compelling “historic evidence” – let alone any meeting minimum standards of scholarship – supporting any of the extraordinary claims concerning Jesus in the New Testaments. So there’s no reason to bother looking for anything false in them. Rational people just reject them as fictional stories outright.
newton,
This is circular.
Is a universe that contains life possible without a creator?
The absolute number is not important it is the ability to create diversity with a very limited number of components that supports a created universe.
Again the atoms themselves are not the issue. The evidence is that such diversity can come from so few components.
https://youtu.be/DfPeprQ7oGc
Not likely. Most of us dismiss it because it doesn’t meet the minimum standards of substantiating historical evidence. The New Testaments are weak evidence of anything by themselves. Anyone who accepts them as historical evidence has no reason to reject Gandalf or Sigurd as not only real folk, but significantly more important to boot.
Robin,
I have heard your assertions before.
Scholars in this area disagree with you. If you can back the claim that it does not meet minimum standards then go for it. Please first define what minimum standards are and who is responsible for setting these standards.
I said it was a tip off.
There’s plenty to doubt, including bizarre episodes like Jesus riding two asses in order to agree with a supposed prophecy. But the fact is that I don’t care much about it, and you don’t find a totally unprecedented and unrepeated miraculous event to be problematic, so it’s hardly worth bringing up the problems.
The problem is that you’re simply not open to opposing evidence at all. If you want to believe in the resurrection or what-not, I really don’t care, and I only addressed that at all because of the absurd claim that logic points to a deity.
The fact is that your confirmation bias ruins any claim you make, and I was noting how that’s true from the first claim that logic points to a deity and on to your credulity regarding the resurrection.
Since you really don’t need or have solid evidence for anything religious that you believe, from design to the resurrection, I don’t see why you don’t just believe and quit trying to pretend that you got to your beliefs using reason and evidence. Clearly you didn’t.
Glen Davidson
Best logical argument is?
These are in fact good questions. There seem to be two categories of biblical scholars – Christians and non-Christians. The first group ASSUMES the historical accuracy of the NT, while the second emphasizes the lack of valid external support for any of it.
Nonetheless, there ARE standards for judging history, which are set basically by a consensus of historians. These include number of independent sources, type of independent sources, reason for recording or commenting on anything, plausibility of claims, and many more. Oddly enough, even Christian historians apply these standards to everything but the bible.
LoL! Um. No. Wrong. Flint child.
Why would that be? Apparently complexity (functional, of course) points to a designer, and so does simplicity. What wouldn’t point to a “designer” using those criteria?
If anything, I’d expect a rather more complex invention by a super-intelligent being, not the simple and initially useless beginnings that mark the early universe. No carbon, then it’s mostly stars with far too short lives to provide energy to the evolution of life, and eventually the universe of today in which most extra-solar planets still lack the requisite conditions for complex life. And while you marvel that such complexity comes from such simplicity, you still don’t credit your God with the wherewithall to set up universe to produce life without intervention. Since that supposedly is needed, why would we even need carbon outside of the planet having life on it? God could just put in in the earth and leave it out of Jupiter.
Complexity evolves from simplicity without intervention. There’s little reason to think that it points to any sort of intelligence, you just take whatever happened to be miraculous. If the universe began with carbon and life, you’d say, wow, that must be due to God. If the universe begins with hydrogen, helium, no life, and no conditions that then could support life, well, how miraculous for life to come from that (despite the fact that you require a miracle to get life and eukaryotes anyway). I don’t think you can imagine that anything happened without God being responsible.
Glen Davidson
Flint,
I see these standards being followed with the exception on the plausibility of claims which is very hard to measure. I think this is what makes those on either side of the argument think the other guy is illogical. If you think that we live in a random accident then the miracle claims seem implausible.
If we live in a created universe then none of the claims seem implausible if indeed Jesus was the son on the Creator. If I am the designer of the PC and it dies due to a burned our capacitor, fixing it is a chip shot. 🙂
For Glen, all the evidence points to one thing and one thing only. There’s no ambiguity at all. It seems to bother him that while people agree that all the evidence points to one thing and one thing only, they disagree with him only over what it points to.
Does he even notice how he’s the pot calling the kettle black? I really doubt it.
But it’s amusing to watch.
GlenDavidson,
In order to support this claim you would have to do what no one else can. Show how life originated and then show how major innovations originated.
Good luck with that. 🙂
Exhibit A. The space shuttle. From such simple beginnings … And no interventionisms required! LMAO
No, I all I’d have to do to support what I wrote is to inject a small amount of dye into clear moving water. Initially simple in appearance, soon it would become complex and turbulent.
Your attempted goalpost move is ridiculous.
Glen Davidson
Yes you have, but oddly you’ve not provided a rebuttal.
It would be nice if you could actually demonstrate this. Last time you provided a list of folks, most were not even scholars (the Hovinds? Plantinga? C’mon…), but of those who did qualify as scholars, most do (or did) not even support your claim about historic evidence for the resurrection (Professor Mary Adams? Reverend Spong? Ring a bell?).
So really, your claim is vacuous.
Already did, but let’s compound it shall we?
http://www.williamcronon.net/researching/documents.htm
https://www.questia.com/library/61984205/a-guide-to-historical-method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/marwick1.html
https://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&civ/chapters/01HIST.htm
So, the minimum standards for historical evaluation are then:
1) Source criticism (ironically, Spong wrote a good essay on this as it applies to the resurrection stories)
2) Adhering to procedures for contradictory sources. Oddly completely dropped by biblical apologists. How many women came to the supposed tomb?
3) Principles for determining reliability. The lack of 2 above throws 3 out the window. But further, the reliability of the testaments is compounded by the lack of any external supporting references.
4) Eyewitness testimony evaluation. None of the testaments could have been written by eyewitnesses, so they cannot be considered strong evidence right out of the gate. They could still be valuated on the basis of Oral Tradition, except there’s no evidence of any such relating of these stories from the events themselves. It’s possible Mark’s source could be oral tradition, but thus far there’s no actual evidence to support such a conclusion.
So you believe there’s a Creator based on the “evidence” of the resurrection of Jesus.
And you believe the resurrection of Jesus is plausible if there’s a Creator.
Forget about the blatant non-sequiturs for a minute and try to spot the circularity of that
That is the question, what is your logic that it is impossible since we are trying to show logically God must exist .If it is possible God may exist or may not.
There are lots of particles which make up those components, is that evidence against the existence of God? How many components would it take to be not evidence for God?
In depends at what level of resolution you choose, humans have lots of components at one level which actually is an argument for a designer. To create such diversity from one component could be viewed as metaphorically pointing toward the simplicity of God and a feat of design
dazz,
You have created a circular argument and criticized yourself for it.
You mean to tell me you’ve never made your case for a Creator based on the purported evidence of Jesus’ resurrection?
Robin,
Here is Strobel’s response to your argument.
While you have made a point that there are inconsistencies to the account there does not appear to be any killer contradictions. All stories agree that Jesus was crucified was placed in a tomb and later the tomb was empty.
dazz,
My argument starts with the evidence of a created universe.
The resurrection and historical study is trying to narrow down who the creator is.
newton,
While the claim that it is impossible would be difficult to support. I think trying to support the claim that it is possible is a tall order. You have to try to disqualify a deity up front like Rum does with his Occum’s razor claim that God is the most difficult explanation.
If you could show the self assembly of matter and life in the lab from unlike materials he would have a shot in claiming a creator is a hypothesis with more assumptions then the random chance theory, but then we would have to explain the origin of the unlike materials so the fact there is something rather then nothing points to a creator.
The fact that there is material at all points to the existence of a creator. The amazing part of it is that those same materials can build anything from matter to life. The closest human design comparison is the integrated circuit.
Simple complexity is the hallmark of elegant design. I again point to the integrated circuit.
I suspect that I’m not the only lurker here who enjoys a well-reasoned argument.
Who are the other contenders for the honor?
Intelligent stupidity is the hallmark of religious apologetics.