Dr. Joshua Swamidass, a theistic evolutionist, joined us recently at TSZ. I think the following comment of his will lead to some interesting and contentious discussion and is worthy of its own thread:
Third, if we drop “Darwinian” to just refer to the current modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, you are right that the scientific account does not find any evidence of direction or planning. I agree with you here and do not dispute this.
So the question becomes, really, is it possible that God could have created a process (like evolution) with a purposeful intent that science could not detect? I think the answer here is obvious. Of course He could. In fact, I would say, unless He wanted us to discern His purpose, we could not.
In my view, then, evolution has a purpose in creating us. Science itself cannot uncover its purpose. I find that out by other means.
dazz,
Nature just…did it.
Philosophy for people with no interest to think at all.
You can add all the layers of self delusion you want on top of that, and you’re still left with the upper layer just… did it
keiths,
Do you guys agree with this intuition that all these compatibilist efforts push God more and more towards the deistic side of things (A god that can’t interfere with nature) and that can’t possibly reconciled with incarnations, miracles, resurrections, etc..?
dazz,
No, you left are left with intelligence did it. Instead of nothing did it.
Or he could be the Tripersonal Christian God and know things both timelessly and temporally like we do .
I’m sorry that I have not been following this conversation closely. Could you possibly explain why this is the case?
Are you just saying that the incarnation is incompatible with libertarian free will in human’s?
If you are saying that temporal knowledge is logically incompatible with timeless knowledge I would disagree.
The Trinity makes the two kinds of knowledge possible in the same God.
Actually Christianity holds that those kids die because of our own free will choice to sin.
peace
I think I’ve bored everyone far too much here with my best phoodoo/FFM impersonation. And I know first hand arguing with you about these things always ends badly. I’m not interested in your presuppositionalist nonsense, sorry
I thought you said the alternative was nature did it. Can’t you follow your own line of thought?
So why are things like they are?
Me: nature is just the way it is
You: goddidit, and he did it that way because god is just the way it is
That is OK. I understand. We all make our choices
I would just tell you that any world that will accommodate someone like me and you will have dying children and all the other things you find objectionable.
So I’m very grateful that God choose to create this one and also made provision to eventually and as soon as possible eliminate the bad parts.
peace
That doesn’t follow, but we all know you’re terrible at logic. In fact you just said those children die for our sins. And you probably think that as a regenerate or whatever you call it, your sins are forgiven and children only die for someone elses sins.
“Eliminate the bad parts”. I guess that would be me. How nice of you.
Your belief system is obnoxious, self-centric, and turns you into a borderline psychopath. If being an “unregenerate” is the opposite of what you are, I’m glad to be one
No they die because we are sinners not “for” our sins.
My sins are forgiven that does not mean that my actions don’t have consequences.
I understand why you find it to be objectionable.
It’s much easier mentally to think that you are blameless in all the suffering that you see or to shift the blame to God.
I’m not sure why you think that recognizing our responsibility for the suffering we see is psychopathic could you explain that part?.
peace
He said, blaming the other.
Glen Davidson
Who do you think I’m blaming? We humans (all of us) are to blame.
peace
dazz,
Intelligence is something we have an understanding of. Nature made nature is saying nothing. Forced to choose between the two, intelligence did it is the more parsimonious answer. That it challenges your worldview is really just your own hang-up. Claiming nothing did it is better than something did it is just silly. Its mentally lazy.
I have nothing to do with the cause of those children dying, and I don’t have to blame anybody else precisely because I don’t need to make rationalizations for gods I don’t believe in. Because you believe in god you’re left with no other option than to blame it on someone else and you choose to blame it on people, as idiotic and disgusting as that is. And then you choose to ignore the glaring issue that a god that makes innocent children pay for the sins of others is a piece of shit not worth believing in, let alone worshiping
Of all Christianity’s variations Calvinism is probably the most gleefully misanthropic.
Who could question that? An all-powerful god, perhaps?
Yes you do. How much effort have you put into improving children’s healthcare? Certainly not everything you could have.
When you blame chance or nature you are making rationalizations for your god.
God does not make Children pay for the sins of others
Children are sinners too we are all in this together.
They don’t necessarily pay for the sins of others though they might as when a mother kills her child because she finds him to be inconvenient.
peace
I don’t (though maybe I should) think of randomness as being required to have particular epistemic results: I think of random events as just being uncaused. That’s enough to make them random, whatever may or may not be previously known about them.
I admit, though, that my simple conception probably doesn’t capture all of what “random” means, because it may be that some of the statistical tests commonly used to determine randomness have nothing at all to do with the likelihood of being a causally determined result. This, I think, is a problem not just for my conception but for the term itself. I mean, as commonly used, “random” tends to be one part epistemic, and one part about the world, which tends to make for a nasty brew.
This bipartite quality in ordinary usage is well described by the Dembski article, I think, and, in the end, he seems to me to suggest shoving the whole kaboodle into the epistemic side. He suggests that something be called random just in case it doesn’t fit into any of THESE (pre-specified) patterns. Of course, that def. also doesn’t capture all of the facets of “random” in ordinary language, but at least it clearly removes the bipartate aspect. As Dembski wants to use the term, it doesn’t have anything to do with either (non-epistemic) probability or causation.
Now, it could be, as Joe F. suggests above, that the point of this trick of Dembski’s was just to make a nice bed for some deity to sleep in. That is, the whole idea may have been to make design compatible with evolution: I don’t know what to think about that: it’s something that would be more intelligently discussed by Joe or Tom E. But I DO think Dembski’s article clarifies some of the issues surrounding the concept of randomness and so may reduce some of the “mindfucky” attributes of these matters for you.
OTOH, a lot of these questions are irreducibly mindfucky, IMHO….. And sometimes I prefer to join Joni Mitchell in singing “Never mind the questions there’s no answers to.”
Exactly. Those of us lucky enough to live in a free society should support and nurture the values of true secularism. One’ s personal beliefs should be sacrosanct and inviolable. Of course, any public expression of those ideas should be open to challenge and criticism. I am perfectly at ease with anyone following their own personal beliefs; it is the assumption of religious authority to promote or force those views on to others that I object to.
😉 🙂 🙂
No problem, do a William J Murray and invent a god of your own preference.
walto,
walto,
You are nothing if not thoughtful. This site is much better because you are here
peace
Oh….that’s the good stuff.
walto,
Thanks, I’ll look up Dembski’s paper.
And just like that, everyone is a porn star…
fifthmonarchyman,
Thanks, fifth. I appreciate it!
dazz,
Hmm! Aging pornstar maybe?
Agreed but also thus unpredictable – unless you are an omniscient god.
That may be right. But maybe you don’t need to be omniscient. Maybe some Star Trek species could do it. Humans can’t, though–not without some special X-Man gland or something, anyhow.
You missed the not so subtle point Alan. I am emphasizing saying nature did it is saying nothing. Thus in truth there are only two options. Chaos or planned.
You said it.
If all humanity was not linked in this way.
I would have no hope.
peace
dazz, to fifth:
fifth:
A tiny baby suffers a painful death from cancer and then spends eternity in hell? The sinful brat deserves it.
dazz,
No, because it’s possible for human behavior to be deterministic even if the world as a whole isn’t.
Suppose that a) God actively futzes with the world, and b) that spontaneous and random events also occur. Such a world is obviously not deterministic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the humans within it are behaving non-deterministically.
As long as God is not futzing internally with a person (like the inane “hardening Pharaoh’s heart” stuff in the Bible), and as long as random events are not occurring within the person, and as long as the laws of physics are themselves deterministic, then the person’s behavior is deterministic in the following quite strong sense: it’s a function of nothing but the person’s internal state and the “inputs” from the environment, and it’s predictable in principle from them.
So compatibilism applies in that case even if God is messing around and pulling crap like making donkeys talk.
It’s not that he deserves it exactly. It’s that he chooses it. Separation from the source of life is what we all want absent the grace of God. Are you saying that a small child is incapable of choice?
As far as eternity goes do you think it’s impossible to sin in hell?
peace
Babies choose to die of cancer.
I reject your false dichotomy. There is the possibility we don’t know the answer.
No, they like the rest of us would rather exclude themselves from the source of life.
All of us foolishly think we can avoid the source of life and not die
peace
This is your brain on God. Any questions?
Do babies make these all-important metaphysical decisions in between crying, puking, sleeping, shitting and vomiting or during?
How long do we have to wait before nurses recommend new mothers prevent their babies excluding themselves from the source of life?
I’d like to ask where you can get the good stuff, but I’m afraid that it wouldn’t wear off after a few hours or so.
Glen Davidson
1) Why do you think babies don’t decide?
2)is there something necessary for decision making that children don’t have?
3)What exactly is it?
4) When exactly did you decide to reject the source of life?
5) did you think it was an “all-important metaphysical decision” at that time or just “skeptical” business as usual?
Mothers attempt to do this already.
It’s called discipline we try to restrain our children’s foolish selfishness from birth
We try and get them to sleep when they don’t want to and not to eat their own poop and to keep their fingers out of the electrical outlets.
You know, stuff like that.
If you doubt that children are selfish and unwise from birth you haven’t spent a lot of time with them
peace
You don’t know if there is a word in English that means something other than a plan or no plan? Maybe there is a term no one has ever used before that is both not a plan, and not NOT a plan?
Is using the out of, well, maybe there is some other thing, really a logical solution to anything? If someone says, something either exists or it doesn’t, you can claim this is a false dichotomy, because maybe there is another option that we just don’t know of right now?
If that were the case, there could NEVER be a false dichotomy. Oh except for the thing we don’t know about right now that could be a false dichotomy but we just can’t name it right now. Oh, but then its not really a false dichotomy because there is an explanation for it that we don’t know…
Something is either true or not true. Not necessarily! We just don’t know the other option!
Alan:
keiths:
Alan:
Questioning it wouldn’t change it.
walto:
Be careful there. It isn’t that random events are uncaused, it’s that they aren’t determined by their causes. If I measure the spin of an electron, I’m causing the outcome — a measurement result — but I’m not determining that it will be spin up versus spin down.
Any specified finite sequence can be produced deterministically (e.g. by a finite state machine) or randomly (though you might have to wait a very long time for it to show up). Therefore you can never look at a sequence and declare, based on the sequence alone, that it was definitely produced either deterministically or randomly.
swamidass:
Alan:
What does that have to do with what swamidass said?
keiths,
I was agreeing that we are (at that point in the discussion) in the realm of theology.
But an omnipotent god can do anything! How can you say she can’t?
Correct, It’s a good thing we are not dealing with a merely omnipotent God but the Christian God. A merely omnipotent God is a recipe for chaos.
The Christian God can’t do anything that is against his nature. So what he does is always consistent and logical
peace
I’m rejecting the assertion that by ruling out an explanation, the default must be “planned”. Ruling out an explanation does not improve the validity of an alternative hypothesis. Every tub must stand on its own bottom.