If God exists, atheism is false. Thus atheism is dependent upon the truth of whether or not God exists.
Imagine a world in which it is true that God exists and it is also the case that atheism is true.
This is the world of Patrickatheism.
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Your demands for “objective empirical evidence” are vacuous, by your own admission. Is it my fault that you cannot see that?
I [Patrick] would believe ‘x’ if I only had objective empirical evidence of ‘x.’ I [Patrick] do not have any objective empirical evidence of ‘x’, therefore I do not believe ‘x.’
Now you can deny all you like that you are not making a claim here, but you clearly are. At the least, you claim to be in possession of a means to test God claims.
Yet you deny that you are in possession of a means to test God claims.
You contradict yourself. That’s what Patrickathiests do.
Can you explain how you plan to test any definition of God using the methods of empiricism?
No? Thought not. LoL.
Kantian Naturalist,
Good point 🙂 The origin of components of atoms are also lack a good scientific explanation. Also the origin of the 4 forces that allow atoms behave the way they do and to create order to the universe.
Thank you for your explanation on Godel’s theorem..
Why merely suppose it?
I suppose I’d say that if only 1% of the claims anti-ID proponents make were actually true we’d be living in a golden age where disease was a thing of the past.
Whatever.
Patrick knows Edison invented the light bulb because he [Patrick] demanded objective empirical evidence.
When Patrick first heard that humans exist, he demanded “objective empirical evidence.”
Right, Patrick?
Patrickatheism is for morons.
I just love Patrickatheism. It lack any positive content and can’t be falsified by any objective empirical evidence. I’d call for all Patrickatheists to unite, but on what would they unite?
I’m not arguing anything. I’m asking for a definition of what you mean by “god”. You are refusing to provide such.
That is a massively false equivalence. The various mechanisms of evolution are well documented and the evidence supporting them is overwhelming. You can’t even define what you mean by “god”, let alone provide any objective, empirical evidence for such a thing.
Asking for evidence to support claims should be expected at The Skeptical Zone.
That seems perfectly rational. What is your objection?
No, the only claim I’m making is that I have never been presented with a serious, coherent definiton of “god” nor with any objective, empirical evidence to support the existence of such an entity. Can you provide either?
I don’t even know what theists mean when they use the word “god” and none thus far have been willing or able to provide a definition that is internally coherent, consistent with reality, and within the broad range of what most people would consider to be a god. There’s nothing to test.
Again, I’m just a regular atheist (one who lacks belief in a god or gods).
Again, just simple atheism: A lack of belief in a god or gods. Easily refuted by providing objective, empirical evidence for any such entities.
Got any?
This is a dubious response to Petruska’s question. No medical research of which I’m aware (in nephrology, immunology, or physiology to name a few) incorporates or relies upon any ‘design principles”. First, there’s no need; such research relies on how biology and chemistry work. But more importantly, there are no actual “design principles for researchers to even consult or consider. There’s no reference to any such “design principles” in any med school, there’s no books or products available in any research centers, there are no seminars the use or apply such concepts provided to medical researchers. I know…I’ve been involved in such medical areas for over 40 years.
Further, your comments above just don’t make sense and reflect an ignorance of medical research (and scientific research in general.) Actual medical researchers and actual research projects are highly focused on effects and not per se mechanics. What you describe above (in terms of finding a protein that causes cancer) is more related to diagnosis and not research, but even then, doctors don’t investigate the mechanics all that much. Why? Because that’s what biology and chemistry provide. We already know how proteins develop and even how cancers develop; we don’t research those things at this point and certainly not with any “design principles” in mind.
But this does bring up an interesting side issue that relates to why I dismiss ID: if ID were a valid concept and it’s proponents were really interested in it from a scientific, there’d be some followup on it. But nobody has done anything with it. Not Behe, not Axe, not Gauger, not Dembski, not…anyone. No one, for instance, has ever even tried to do research on…say…if DNA is designed, then we should see X if we look at Y. Not a soul has even proposed going that route. Why? My own take is that the proponents are actually interested in ID as science; that’s not its point. And further, I bet all or nearly all recognize that there is no practical application or implication “from an ID perspective.” They know it’s empty and couldn’t care less.
The list is idiotic.There is no theory of biological design, no specifications for materials and methods. Specifically, there is no way to design proteins de novo, no way to design regulatory networks or tweak regulation or proteins. No way to know without trial and error whether biologically active molecules are safe and effective.
All design in pharmaceuticals is done by brewing up large batches of molecules and testing them for activity, then testing them for therapeutic effect, then testing them for safety. It’s all random production of variants followed by selection. It costs about a billion dollars to get a new product to market, when all the failures are accounted for.
Biological design is a systematized version of evolution.
Patrick,
You continue to argue with statements of personal incredulity without backing up your claims.
I may or may not be massively false but if you have been following this blog you will understand that the bulk of the TOE cannot be tested empirically because it is a historical science. Universal Common Decent is an inference based on common biochemical mechanisms we cannot test how a major transition occurred. If we look at the first major transition to eukaryotic cells you will see that not only can we not test for it we are challenged to come up with a reasonable story of how it happened.
IMHO the hard stop you have set that God cannot be empirically tested has created a distorted view of the evidential support for God.
Robin,
I disagree with you here. Medical research rely on the repeatability, predictability and standardization of biological systems. These are all characteristics of system design. It is hard to do research if what you are working on has random unpredictable effects. In Petrushka’s example of drug development the development would not work if the molecules would not bind repeatably.
Here I agree but their lack of practical application does not mean the inference will never have value.
colewd,
You are ignoring the fact that the binding behavior cannot be predicted. there are generalizations that can be made regarding sequence and folding, but no really useful generalizations that would enable a designer to bypass evolution or trial and error.
It’s either evolution in the wild, or evolution in the lab.
colewd:
Patrick,
How is that a problem? Geology works without testing everything out, but your don’t complain about the lack of accounting for everything there. In fact, you don’t complain about ID not accounting for anything, except via the haziest and laziest “design can do it” assumptions.
Why don’t you test the asteroid strike at the end of the Cretaceous?
We can test whether common descent holds during major transitions. It does, while “common design” has no evidence for it.
While you ignore the fact that the evidence indicates common descent, and design has no evidence.
Why, because you demand no specific evidence for God, while demanding specific evidence for everything not involved with God. Sorry, that’s your intense bias.
Glen Davidson
Or of functioning biologic systems. You’re playing the usual ID game of trying to define biologic function as “design.” It won’t wash where real thinking happens.
Wow, enzymes work.
Why are enzyme found in “families”? Why are enzymes as similar as they are between mice and humans? Why are bird enzymes a good deal different? Hint–common descent with birds branching away from our line much earlier than mice would explain it, agree with the fossil record, and comport with the derivations expected from common descent. Design tells us nothing about these relationships, as real designers aren’t limited by reproduction within separate lines.
Real design inference–the kind based on actual observation of design–would impede research, as it would go against the limitations actually followed by evolution. Only the most pathetic after-the-fact fitting of preconceived design to the facts can get around that, such as Behe’s “evolution by design” that has never been observed anywhere.
Glen Davidson
I think he’s saying the brute physics of it. i.e. without a deity things would just be random and no consistent binding would be possible.
The ultimate god of the gaps. And if that’s where he’s already been pushed back to, suits. me. No cancers cures I guess then.
Hm, sounds like miracles, in fact.
Glen Davidson
Not always and not exactly. There are many elements and processes in biological systems that are quite unpredictable or that don’t behave the same way across the board. It’s what makes medicine so challenging at times. I, for example, do not generate PRA (percentage of reactive antigens, an immunological sensitivity that occurs when the immune system reacts to a given foreign protein) at all. I also have no pulp in my teeth (can’t feel a thing; wonderful for dentist appointments and avoiding brain-freeze). Neither of those turned out to be hereditary either, just mutational flukes. And there have been plenty of medical researchers investigating them and other such anomalies.
Even if it were true that medical research relied upon them, they are also characteristics of non-designed systems. Repeatability, predictability, and standardization are therefore not evidence of system design. It’s simply question begging to offer them as such.
Not true at all. Plenty of stochastic systems are studied and used as the basis for pharmacological research and development. Antibiotic development in particular is now based on a variety of evolutionary principles simply because so many bugs are becoming resistant so quickly. The entire field of immunology is rife with examples of randomness. In fact, autoimmune diseases are basically the definition of randomness in biological systems.
Heck, there’s a whole branch of medicine devoted to research into unpredictable effects simply because people are different and react to many treatments and medications in unpredictable ways. Supposed “design theory” doesn’t offer anything in that arena.
Well, I’m not even talking about practical application in this case. I’m simply noting that no one has bothered to do any type of ID-based research at all. Whether it might have some practical value down the road is hardly a good reason to hitch a wagon to the concept, and less so if it’s own proponents can’t be bothered to actually use said “design principles” themselves to investigate anything.
Well, science is not and never has been out to prove that deities don’t exist or that deities don’t hover about and move every particle.
Science is about finding regularities.
Nature is the casino, and science is out to find if the games are capricious or regular.
Does that mean that one can depend on the Designer not intervening?
Because that seems reasonable by your argument.
Glen Davidson
OMagain:
Yes, and I keep asking him how he knows that.
Colewd, start with the assumption that there is no creator, and show us step by step how that leads to the conclusion that bindings would not be repeatable.
You won’t be able to, of course.
Robin,
Can you identify a non biological system that has these features and is not designed?
Robin,
I am certainly sure this is sometimes the case. I also believe the apparent randomness is due in some cases to an incomplete understanding of the system. Drug resistance to cancer is an example.
GlenDavidson,
I this case a designer is involved he is just using a trial and error design method.
GlenDavidson,
Yes. The inference of universal common decent and the design inference are competing explanations. Do you really think the evidence you mentioned rules out design? What is the mechanism you propose that supports Universal Common Descent? How would it evolve the first eukaryotic cell?
petrushka,
The lab is not a blind unguided process. Even if it is trial and error it can record results and eliminate options.
What does design explain? Explicitly, not hand-waving, not homiletics. Not your claim that both common descent and common design are inferences, since only the former is a scientific inference, the latter just a lazy “looks designed” and “design can do anything” homiletics-type “analogy.”
It certainly tells against it. And nothing tells for it in any meaningful way. Nothing, from gravity to erosion rules out design in orbital mechanics or in geology either, of course.
Naturally, the question is actually about science, which follows evidence, rather than starkly ruling anything out. Of course you’re not dealing with science, you’re pushing ID, which is not science. If you were interested in science, you’d note that design has nothing going for it, and plenty of evidence against any sort of known design operating in life’s forms.
Imprecise reproduction.
How was the first eukaryotic cell designed? See, common descent explains much, you’re just looking for gaps to stuff in design. You have no mechanism or evidence for design, you just claim it for any lack of evolutionary step, an entirely illegitimate bias.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
I think to say that design has nothing going for it is an exaggeration. I agree it is limited. Especially answering the how question i.e. how was it designed. This is tuff because I see lots of evidence of design in biology but agree with you that at this point there is not much we can do with it. I do not agree with Robin that taking a design mentality into biological research is of no value. I honestly don’t have a firm opinion on ID at this point other than an alternative inference to keep evolutionary theory honest. I think Universal Common Descent is on shaky grounds because how transitions occur is very poorly understood.
GlenDavidson,
This is the most important transition in biology. Without a clear explanation Universal Common Descent is on very shaky ground. This is theory breaking gap.
Why, because you say so?
Are we supposed to ignore the evidence for common descent in the transition? See, you haven’t even begun to explain the evidence that eukaryotes evolved via common descent by instead using “common design.” You don’t even have a perceivable designer.
Yet your non-evidenced “alternative” gets equal billing from you. Clearly it’s not evidence prevailing.
Glen Davidson
Well, where’s the evidence? We have a number of facts that are entailed by common descent, like pterosaur, bird, and bat wings having no flying homologies (deeper homologies between the forelimbs do exist, however, as one would expect from separate evolutions of flight from common skeletal elements), the extremely derivative nature (derivative largely of ancestral information, especially among vertebrates) of life-forms, and the lack of easily designed (but difficult to evolve) capabilites such as radio communication among animals.
What does design have, except its ignoring of the problem of the lack of portability of design and the pretense that “functional complexity” is evidence of design? It isn’t by itself, and, in context, the evidence is against design.
I didn’t say it is limited. It’s absent. Homiletic-type analogies aren’t evidence, but believers are primed to believe them via, well, homilies.
You have failed badly to show how you legitimately see design in life.
No, it has a negative value. If you really expected life to be designed by fitting structure to need, rather than fitting structure first to heredity and secondarily adapted to need, you’d not understand the human skeleton, or how closely something like a mouse physiology models human physiology. You can work around this lack of design expectation in human physiology and in comparative anatomy, but that’s at best ad hoc excusing of the evidence contrary to your belief.
It’s a prejudice, not an inference–at least not a scientific inference. Since it doesn’t explain, how is it supposed to keep evolutionary theory “honest”? I’d far prefer using science to keep evolutionary theory honest.
You constantly refer to “universal common descent,” which isn’t really a prediction of evolutionary theory at all, rather a discovery. And since evidence indicates common descent across the transitions, you really lack any meaningful criticism of evolutionary transitions at all. That you constantly refer to it indicates that you grounded your opposition to evolution on this “criterion” without even considering the evidence that common descent persists throughout the transition. Why you think it’s a meaningful objection, other than that the books you read claimed that it was, is beyond me.
What you’re clearly not doing is letting empiricism be your guide. I see the evidence of evolution throughout, recognize no excuse for denying that evidence even if certain transitional knowledge is lost to history, and stick by the evidence. You have chosen a “criterion” that is supposed to fell evolution in order to judge evolution, and since it’s considered to be more important than the actual evidence that life evolved, including during the transitions, naturally you consider it to be fatal to evolution. What you haven’t done, nor have the authorities whom you believe, is to show how your incredibility over transitions actually trumps the evidence that those transitions were limited by hereditary processes.
If we’re really letting the evidence decide, we stick with the evidence that transitions were evolutionary in origin, and not revolutionary new designs, such as we sometimes see in human designs. You’re privileging the questions, and thereby ignoring the telling evidence.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
Where is the evidence for a pre existing evolutionary pre curser to:
The spliceosome
The nuclear pore complex
Introns
Chromosome structure
You say that design has no explanatory power. This is the first necessary transition to show Universal Common Descent. Do you have to claim god of the gaps before you even start explaining the theory. Or are you saying there is no theory of evolution? If it is not Universal Common descent what is it? Help me understand the alternative to the design hypothesis. Feel free to let empiricism be your guide 🙂
How do you think the 30k nucleotides of the spliceosome that yeast can re produce every time they divide became organized?
You can’t even manage to exclude my cat. Which goes to show that you have no “objective empirical means” by which to judge any “objective empirical evidence” presented to you. That fact that you remain an atheist in spite of the objective empirical evidence further substantiates this analysis.
You are simply incapable of judging the matter and are only fooling yourself.
Actually you said that design has no explanatory power too:
and there’s nothing honest in “design” not-a-theory precisely because no one in your camp is even trying to elaborate on it to add any kind of meaningful detail. It’s dishonest to pretend it’s a scientific inference. It’s dishonest to pretend that something without any logical entailments undermines evolution, or (universal) common ancestry, or anything else. It’s dishonest to insist it’s 100% scientific instead of religious claptrap disguised in sciency jargon and then dismiss “materialists” for their “scientism”.
But hey, I guess you’re proving us all wrong when you finally find a cure for cancer and publish your super-duper research on vitamin D based on the grand design paradigm. How’s that going Bill? Coming along nicely? Keep us posted
colewd,
Skiddle-ump, skiddle-ump, skiddle-ump …
Well, Jesus of course!
Explain the origin of the items on that list with ‘Design theory’ then.
Let’s see, design explains them how?
Well, what’s the design explanation?
What does that even mean? Have you explained the huge quantity of archaeal and bacterial genes in eukaryotes using design? Have you explained endosymbiosis of chloroplasts and mitochondria using design? Have you explained anything using design without hand-waving and pretending that “
Goddesign can do anything”?Who was designing life 2 billion years ago, and more importantly, what evidence do you have for this entity and its actions?
Do you have nothing but gaps with design? You haven’t explained anything with design, not a point mutation, not the transition to eukaryotes, not anything, ever.
I’m saying that you have no theory, and haven’t explained anything that evolution explains, let alone what it hasn’t. Instead of providing explanation, you just sort of babble away with inanities.
There is no alternative to the “design hypothesis,” as there is no design hypothesis that means anything. We have evidence for evolution. We have no evidence that is coherent and meaningful for design. You just have an enormous presupposition that design is the default, and you have no explanation of or by design. You have no explanation for (apparent) common descent, no evidence of a designer, no evidence of an alternative to the one explanation actually based on the evidence.
Why don’t you?
Must be design. You don’t know how, more importantly, you really don’t care how. You don’t even care about the evolutionary evidence, which you neither seek to explain nor to understand, rather to undermine by demanding evolution to explain everything, while you explain nothing. Somehow, you think that something that explains much fails against something that explains nothing at all, mainly because you feel that design can explain anything and everything (because God) without ever needing any kind of evidence that it explains the slightest thing.
Which is why discussing this with you never gets anywhere. If your “explanation” wins because it has no evidence at all, clearly evolution can never win in your mind because it actually has good evidence, just not evidence for everything that occurred.
It’s evidence that’s the problem for you. You want what has no evidence for it to have occurred, because without evidence there are no questions. No explanations, no problems with explanation, just wondrous, evidence-free “design.” Real evidence raises real problems, and relying on real evidence destroys ID at every level, since there is no meaningful inference to design at all. Better for you to ignore real evidence and assume that God can do anything and everything
So it’s God of the gaps for you no matter what. Einstein wrote:
http://www.pbagalleries.com/content/2016/01/20/god-and-albert-einstein/
It may be important for you to introduce such a concept, but clearly it’s not because it actually explains anything. You don’t even begin to try in a meaningful way, let alone succeed.
Glen Davidson
One difficulty I see with IDists/creationists is that they (evidently) have a real issue with any scientific explanations that are incomplete or problematic. This really goes back to the fact that they’ve been taught to accept “answers” that in fact are unproblematic, mainly because they’re vacuous. The usual religious response to “rival” claims has indeed been to find fault with the latter, while they do not find fault with their own “answers,” mainly because the latter is their starting point and not their conclusion from any evidence.
That’s how design becomes the default–a perfect explanation with a perfect Designer that can do anything and everything. How can anything with explanatory gaps and problems compare with that? Yet such an explanation won’t do in courts, in engineering, or in any science that is acceptable to them. You don’t get to claim omnipotence for your statements, whatever the problems, they get to claim (or actually, assume without question) omnipotence for their statements. And it gets back to the religious (and more or less the Pythagorean-Platonic) mindset that you really need perfect and unproblematic knowledge if you are to trust it, if you are to build your life and your knowledge upon it (more to the point, they think their religion is perfect and unproblematic, even if there seem to be some problems). Science won’t do, it has issues and problems–especially in matters like evolutionary transitions, origin of life, and origin of the universe.
For empiricism, issues, knowledge gaps, and problems are good things that exist because we do not assume perfect and unproblematic Causes. Evolutionary issues are something to look into, to ponder, to discuss, to try to resolve by teasing out more evidence. It’s an opportunity, afforded by the incomplete knowledge coming down from organisms. An omnipotent Cause would simply shortchange our ability to question, to ponder, and to utilize what we know (like common descent) to work at this problem.
But one can’t really deny that it’s an inadequate basis for knowledge and life, which is what many religious people are demanding. To be sure, many of us wouldn’t raise any fuss if they just took God as such a basis for knowledge and left science alone to work out what happened using knowledge of limits such as common descent, the issue is that some of them think it’s a great “alternative” to anything that is problematic, such as scientific questions of origins. Problem vs. no problem. How is one supposed to prefer the problems to the problem-free scenario?
And yet, limits and problems aren’t bad things in science, they’re opportunities for knowledge. We insist that the problems exist, and that sweeping them away with imaginary omnipotence destroys our possibilities for knowledge. The thing is, though, that this is basically foreign thinking to many religious folk (it took me some time to get past the power of the one-sided demands for explanation, simply because religion really was the default in the beginning), that one would insist on hanging onto a problematic explanation over just assuming that omnipotence must be responsible, thereby to erase (from mind anyway) all problems, can seem to be intransigence against reason. Maybe it even is, but we justify such “intransigence” by noting that reason by itself never supplied reliable knowledge of observable things like empiricism has, the latter by insisting on the reality of problems due to limited possibilities for answers.
Yes, evolutionary theory has its challenges and explanatory gaps, like any ongoing science does. ID does not have challenges and explanatory gaps, like any non-explanation based on some unlimited power(s) fails to have. For many of us, that’s the very essence of useful inquiry vs. useless preconception. For a number of others, it’s the very essence of imperfection vs. perfection, with imperfection the obvious loser.
The trouble with the latter “worldview” is that the only reason it has no problems is that it also has no insights into the limits of real possibility. It’s not always easy to see how this lack of insight actually matters, though, and it is often much easier to be unhappy with the problems that arise when insight supplies answers, but also raises problems (scientific opportunities).
Glen Davidson
Yet you don’t merely ask for evidence, you ask for a particular sort of evidence.
There is an implicit claim in what you ask for to the effect that you have a way to evaluate “objective empirical evidence” for the existence of God. Yet you lack any such criteria.
The proof, as it is said, is in the eating thereof. You are a disbeliever. Therefore your method for evaluating whether or not God exists is absent or faulty.
That is certainly true given your position and it pleases me to see that you and I finally agree. Given that you have nothing to test, because you have no idea what people mean when they talk of God, why the constant demands for objective empirical evidence? How would you test it?
Out of the mouths of babes…
The fact that you can’t even reject my cat as a candidate for God is telling.
Will you now stop demanding “objective empirical evidence,” at least until you are in possession of a definition of God upon which you can devise an empirical test?
If you disagree with my observations of the discussion thus far, please point to where you have defined exactly what you mean by “god” (as opposed to making unsubstantiated claims about what your god has supposedly done) and to where you’ve provided any objective, empirical evidence for such an entity.
Hint: You haven’t.
The fact remains that you have not provided a definition of “god” that is internally coherent, consistent with external reality, and broadly in the realm of what most people would consider a valid usage of the term. You have also not provided any objective, empirical evidence for such a thing.
If you cannot, simply say so and we can drop this subthread.
I find that oddly fascinating. It’s too bad you’ve never experienced the endorphin rush after a particularly painful brain freeze, though. Almost makes it worth it.
That’s why definitions are important. Do you believe that God sent his son to the earth, who died and then resuscitated, and performed all sort of miracles? Do you believe all that actually happened and there were witnesses? If you believe that literally happened, then you believe there can be objective empirical evidence for that god’s existence
I ask for objective, empirical evidence to avoid semantic games and useless responses like “I feel god in my heart.” If this thing you worship actually exists, prove it.
That makes no sense on its face. If you provide a rigorous definition of what you mean by “god” then it should be straightforward to determine if a particular piece of objective, empirical evidence supports the existence of the entity you’ve defined.
You’ve got it completely backwards. I lack belief because I’ve never been presented with a decent definition of the word nor any objective, empirical evidence for such a thing.
I have been requesting both a rigorous definition of what particular believers mean by the word “god” and any objective, empirical evidence they have for such a thing. Thus far, crickets.
It is incumbent upon those making the claim to define their terms clearly.
It is telling that you have not provided a definition for “god” that is internally coherent, consistent with reality, and broadly aligned with what most people would consider a god. I again invite you to do so in such a way that your cat is included. Then we can get to the cat pics.
Patrick,
Again, God is defined as the creator of the universe. That is a definition of what God is by evidence of what god did. It is interesting that you have to shut down discussions with arbitrary rules to defend your faith. Richard Dawkins uses the same tactic.