As an ID proponent and creationist, the irony is that at the time in my life where I have the greatest level of faith in ID and creation, it is also the time in my life at some level I wish it were not true. I have concluded if the Christian God is the Intelligent Designer then he also makes the world a miserable place by design, that He has cursed this world because of Adam’s sin. See Malicious Intelligent Design.
Jesus prophesied of the intelligently designed outcome of humanity: “wars and rumors of wars..famines…pestilence…earthquakes.” If there is nuclear and biological weapons proliferation, overpopulation, destruction of natural resources in the next 500 years or less, things could get ugly. If such awful things are Intelligently Designed for the trajectory of planet Earth, on some level, I think it would almost be merciful if the atheists are right….
The reason I feel so much kinship with the atheists and agnostics at TSZ and elsewhere is that I share and value the skeptical mindset. Gullibility is not a virtue, skepticism is. A personal friend of Richard Dawkins was my professor and mentor who lifted me out of despair when I was about to flunk out of school. Another professor, James Trefil, who has spent some time fighting ID has been a mentor and friend. All to say, atheists and people of little religious affiliation (like Trefil) have been kind and highly positive influences on my life, and I thank God for them! Thus, though I disagree with atheists and agnostics, I find the wholesale demonization of their character highly repugnant — it’s like trash talking of my mentors, friends and family.
I have often found more wonder and solace in my science classes than I have on many Sunday mornings being screamed at by not-so-nice preachers. So despite my many disagreements with the regulars here, because I’ve enjoyed the academic climate in the sciences, I feel somewhat at home at TSZ….
Now, on to the main point of this essay! Like IDist Mike Gene, I find the atheist/agnostic viewpoint reasonable for the simple reason that most people don’t see miracles or God appearing in their every day lives if not their entire lives. It is as simple as that.
Naturalism would seem to me, given most everyone’s personal sample of events in the universe, to be a most reasonable position. The line of reasoning would be, “I don’t see miracles, I don’t see God, by way of extrapolation, I don’t think miracles and God exists. People who claim God exists must be mistaken or deluded or something else.”
The logic of such a viewpoint seems almost unassailable, and I nearly left the Christian faith 15 years ago when such simple logic was not really dealt with by my pastors and fellow parishioners. I had to re-examine such issues on my own, and the one way I found to frame the ID/Creation/Evolution issue is by arguing for the reasonableness of Black Swan events.
I will use the notion of Black Swans very loosely. The notion is stated here, and is identified with a financeer and academic by the name of Nasim Taleb. I have Taleb’s books on investing entitled Dynamic Hedging which is considered a classic monograph in mathematical finance. His math is almost impenetrable! He is something of a Super Quant. Any way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.
The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
1.The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
2.The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
3.The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event’s massive role in historical affairs.Unlike the earlier and broader “black swan problem” in philosophy (i.e. the problem of induction), Taleb’s “black swan theory” refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.[1] More technically, in the scientific monograph Silent Risk , Taleb mathematically defines the black swan problem as “stemming from the use of degenerate metaprobability”.[2]
….
The phrase “black swan” derives from a Latin expression; its oldest known occurrence is the poet Juvenal’s characterization of something being “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno” (“a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan”; 6.165).[3] When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. The importance of the metaphor lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved. In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the logic of any system of thought, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic.Juvenal’s phrase was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement of impossibility. The London expression derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers.[4] In that context, a black swan was impossible or at least nonexistent. After Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia in 1697,[5] the term metamorphosed to connote that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven. Taleb notes that in the 19th century John Stuart Mill used the black swan logical fallacy as a new term to identify falsification.[6]
The very first question I looked at when I was having bouts of agnosticism was the question of origin of life. Now looking back, the real question being asked is “was OOL a long sequence of typical events or a black swan sequence of events.” Beyond OOL, one could go on to the question of biological evolution. If we assume Common Descent or Universal Common Ancestry (UCA), would evolution, as a matter of principle, proceed by typical or black swan events or a mix of such events (the stock market follows patterns of typical events punctuated by black swan events).
If natural selection is the mechanism of much of evolution, does the evolution of the major forms (like prokaryote vs. eukaryote, unicellular vs. multicellular, etc.) proceed by typical or black swan events?
[As a side note, when there is a Black Swan stock market crash, it isn’t a POOF, but a sequence of small steps adding up to an atypical set of events. Black Swan doesn’t necessarily imply POOF, but it can still be viewed as a highly exceptional phenomenon.]
Without getting into the naturalism vs. supernaturalism debate, one could at least make statements whether OOL, eukaryotic evolution (eukaryogenesis), multicellular evolution, evolution of Taxonomically Restricted Features (TRFs), Taxonomically Restricted Genes (TRGs), proceeded via many many typical events happening in sequence or a few (if not one) Black Swan event.
I personally believe, outside of the naturalism supernaturalism debate, that as a matter of principle, OOL, eukaryogenesis, emergence of multicellularity (especially animal multicellularity), must have transpired via Black Swan events. Why? The proverbial Chicken and Egg paradox which has been reframed in various incarnations and supplemented with notions such as Irreducible Complexity or Integrated Complexity or whatever. Behe is not alone in his notions of this sort of complexity, Andreas Wagner and Joe Thornton use similar language even though they thing such complexity is bridgeable by typical rather than Black Swan events.
When I do a sequence lookup at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI), it is very easy to see the hierarchical patterns that would, at first glance, confirm UCA! For example look at this diagram of Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMP) to see the hierarchical patterns:
From such studies, one could even construct Molecular Clock Hypotheses and state hypothesized rates of molecular evolution.
The problem however is that even if some organisms share so many genes, and even if these genes can be hierarchically laid out, there are genes that are restricted only to certain groups. We might refer to them as Taxonomically Restricted Genes (TRG). I much prefer the term TRG over “orphan gene” especially since some orphan genes seem to emerge without the necessity of Black Swan events and orphan genes are not well defined and orphan genes are only a subset of TRGs. I also coin the notion of Taxonomically Restricted Feature (TRF) since I believe many heritable features of biology are not solely genetic but have heritable cytoplasmic bases (like Post Translation modifications of proteins).
TRGs and TRFs sort of just poof onto the biological scene. How would we calibrate the molecular clock for such features? It goes “from zero to sixty” in a poof.
Finally, on the question of directly observed evolution, it seems to me, that evolution in the present is mostly of the reductive and exterminating variety. Rather than Dawkins Blind Watchmaker, I see a Blind Watch Destroyer. Rather than natural selection acting in cumulative modes, I natural selection acting in reductive and exterminating modes in the present day, in the lab and field.
For those reasons, even outside the naturalism vs. supernaturalism debate, I would think a reasonable inference is that many of the most important features of biology did not emerge via large collections of small typical events but rather via some Black Swan process in the past, not by any mechanisms we see in the present. It is not an argument from incredulity so much as a proof by contradiction.
If one accepts the reasonableness of Black Swan events as the cause of the major features of biology, it becomes possible to accept that these were miracles, and if Miracles there must be a Miracle Maker (aka God). But questions of God are outside science. However, I think the inference to Black Swan events for biology may well be science.
In sum, I think atheism is a reasonable position. I also think the viewpoint that biological emergence via Black Swan events is also a highly reasonable hypothesis even though we don’t see such Black Swans in every day life. The absence of such Black Swans is not necessarily evidence against Black Swans, especially if the Black Swan will bring coherence to the trajectory of biological evolution in the present day. That is to say, it seems to me things are evolving toward simplicity and death in the present day, ergo some other mechanism than what we see with our very own eyes was the cause of OOL and bridging of major gaps in the taxonomic groupings.
Of course such a Black Swan interpretation of biology may have theological implications, but formally speaking, I think inferring Black Swan hypotheses for biology is fair game in the realm of science to the extent it brings coherence to real-time observations in the present day.
For some, the conscience is the delivery system.
In your case, the god is your premise, premise commands god’s nature, god’s nature commands morality. Change the premise, morality changes.
Sounds like this God has no free will, certainly not” that which cannot be any greater”
Your premise is the command of what is good, you are just dressing it up with the authority of God
petrushka,
This should be pointed out repeatedly to the IDCists. It complements Mike Elzinga’s explanations of why human scale objects like billiard balls are a very poor analogy for condensed matter physics.
Our intuitions break down at that scale and very few creationists have enough education to know that.
Moved a comment to guano.
Changing the channel works for me.
Newton said:
“What is good” is determined by god’s nature. If god commands things, then “god commands what is good” is not a good way to express the solution to the Euthyphro dilemma. “God can only command what is unchangingly good” might be a better way to say it. IOW, God’s commands cannot change what is good.
However, I don’t think “command” to be an appropriate conceptualization of any activity or characteristic of god.
And yes, if you changed the premise – if god were different – we might all consider torturing the innocent for fun to be a wonderful thing and we would recoil in horror at the idea of giving aid to the helpless or poverty-stricken.
However, what the Euthphro asks for is a kind of god that solves the dilemma. The kind of god I’ve described solves the dilemma, whether or not there could be other kinds of gods.
Thank you.
My interaction with you has actually helped clarify my thoughts, and I realized I’ve made an oversight in what I originally wrote.
The Black Swans that Taleb talks about have been actually witnessed, especially the financial meltdowns and the developments of disruptive technologies.
The Black Swans I was referring to are not actually seen they are only hypothesized depending on the model being discussed.
What can be done is :
1. show that a Black Swan is implicit in a description or model of biological emergence — like OOL. Koonin’s model would be a model that makes the hypothesized Black Swan a central feature.
2. Dawkins Blind Watchmaker argues no Black Swans are needed.
When I was talking about science, I said earlier, hypothesized Black Swans could be subject to science. A better phrasing is that OOL and evolutionary models that argue no Black Swans are needed can be challenged scientifically for the simple fact we can attempt to observe if OOL events are typical.
For example, there was the theory of Spontaneous Generation around Darwin and Pasteur’s time in 1861. Dawkins Blind Watchmaker theory suffers from similar problems that Spontaneous Generation theory does, but not so obviously.
People believe life sprung up spontaneously from non-life. Pasteur, with a little luck, showed that life does not arise spontaneously from non-life. Spontaneous Generation theory was metaphorically a theory that claimed Black Swans were not needed for the generation of life. Science was able to show that such a Black-Swan-free theory was untrue, so at least tentatively a hypothesized Black Swan was still alive in principle.
Figuratively speaking, the Catholic Church spent money and had great interest in backing Pasteur’s experiments to defend the idea a Black Swan was needed for the origin of life.
What is not so obvious is that Dawkins Blind Watchmaker thesis is making comparably bold claims, but people are not realizing they are being falsified by actual lab and field observations. Dawkins claims that the Blind Watchmaker can add more and more design features to the creatures in the biosphere. He wrote the WEASEL program to illustrate this, and there have been other computer simulations as well.
What we have seen , however in the lab and field, when we actually do more accurate accounting is that REDUCTIVE and ELIMINATIVE selection prevent a net CUMULATIVE selection from being realized. Dawkins Blind Watchamaker hypothesis like the Spontaneous Generation hypothesis claim (figuratively speaking) no need of Black Swans, but both theories do not agree with directly observed facts. But most people don’t realize Dawkins hypothesis is falsified repeatedly by lab and field observations. The only place it works is in the imagination of Dawkins proponents who write computer simulations that reflect that imagination.
I’ve suggested my ANNIHILATOR model vs. Dawkins WEASEL is a better model for biological change in the present day in terms of lab and field observations. It consists of at least 3 parts so far:
1. Elimination of Species by Means of Natural Selection
2. Reduction of Complexity by Means of Natural Selection
3. Genetic Entropy (Erosion is a better word) by insufficiency of Natural Purifying Selection
The ANNIHILATOR model is consistent with actual lab and field observations. In implies Black Swans are likely necessary to explain the emergence of complex “endless forms most beautiful” (to Quote Darwin).
PS
Pasteur was lucky because his heating methods didn’t quite elevate the temperature to assure a kill of the germs in question. He got really lucky. Right conclusion, but not quite the best method.
Speaking of Swans, Pasteur’s famous experiment was done with Swan neck test tubes. 🙂
William J. Murray,
And you still don’t understand that putting your conclusion in the premises cancels your argument. The premise added to avoid the dilemma, does the same thing to your argument that the dilemma itself: destroy it. But the worse part is that even if explained to you a zillion times you still don’t get it
Can you name a black swan event in the financial markets. By which i mean something having no lead up or cause?
Badly conceived and written software doesn’t entail anything in the real world.
It astounds me that anyone could think that a badly written GA that doesn’t accumulate complexity could model biological evolution.
If your program fails, fix it.
Thanks, Allan.
I was thinking a bit more about how the moral argument is supposed to work, and I’ve changed my mind about it, because of where the existential quantifiers are located.
In a simplified form, it can be put as follows:
(1.) If there is objective morality, then goodness is absolute, eternal, and unchanging.
(2.) Necessarily, goodness is absolute, eternal, and unchanging only if goodness is a property of the divine nature.
(3.) But there is objective morality.
(4.) Therefore, goodness is absolute, eternal, and unchanging.
(5.) Therefore, God necessarily exists.
If someone accepts (1), (2), and (3), then they must accept (4) and (5). Which is to say that the argument is logically valid. But (1), (2), and (3) are all functioning as independent assertions that can be accepted or rejected one by one.
I myself would accept (3) but I’d deny (1). I think that (2) is interesting and could be right. But since I deny (1), (2) is not too interesting to me. I can accept (3), deny (1), and be neutral on (2) without contradiction, since they are functioning as independent premises. Inconsistency looms only for someone who accepts all of (1), (2), and (3) but denies (4) and (5).
The word morality kind of encapsulates objectivity.
Otherwise we could get by with words that denote or refer to pleasure and pain, and the causes thereof.
Unfortunately atheists here do not apply their skepticism universally. If they did then they would be trashing evolutionism as it makes untestable claims
Hi Sal
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. It has helped me understand your hypothesis.
Your new computer model: I’ve suggested my ANNIHILATOR model vs. Dawkins WEASEL is a better model for biological change in the present day in terms of lab and field observations. It consists of at least 3 parts so far:
ANNIHILATOR appears to model that genetic sequences can be lost not gained vs. Dawkins Weasel model that suggest that genetic sequences can be gained. What is it that is causing loss of the genetic sequences over time? Why isn’t Dawkins model accurate? Is there a simple mathematical description of the root cause of the problem with Dawkins model?
stcordova,
Hi Sal
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. It has helped me understand your hypothesis.
Your new computer model: I’ve suggested my ANNIHILATOR model vs. Dawkins WEASEL is a better model for biological change in the present day in terms of lab and field observations. It consists of at least 3 parts so far:
ANNIHILATOR appears to model that genetic sequences can be lost not gained vs. Dawkins Weasel model that suggest that genetic sequences can be gained. What is it that is causing loss of the genetic sequences over time? Why isn’t Dawkins model accurate? Is there a simple mathematical description of the root cause of the problem with Dawkins model?
stcordova,
stcordova,
stcordova,
[User deleted duplicate? – AF]
The primary reason is most mutational changes are damaging ( or neutral at best), not positive in terms of creative complexity. Selection can’t possibly select toward improvement if a huge number of changes via mutation are for the bad or at best neutral.
Most times selection will selection against sickness, sometimes shockingly it selects also for sickness! If 99.999% of mutations don’t result in more complexity, selection doesn’t have much to work with, hence the inevitable trend is toward damage.
Because it simply doesn’t model facts, it models an imaginative ideology that wants to pretend it has solved the mystery of life. It’s never fun for proponents of an idea to admit they are wrong, so they don’t accept the sort of criticisms you see put forth here.
1. Weasel doesn’t model situations like a human competing with a plant for survival. An good example is the population explosion in Brazil and the many species of plants being destroy in the rain forests. Have humans accumulated that much complexity while various plant species have gone extinct and all the genetic forms lost? No.
If the accounting were honest, we’d say the humans gained almost no complexity and several plant species went extinct and hence got reduced to zero complexity in short order. Hence natural selection is an agent of destruction, not accumulating more net complexity in the biosphere. Darwin should have written the book, Elimination of Species by Means of Natural Selection and he would be far more in line with actual observations.
2. Natural Selection as observed in the lab and field, despite the fact it selects against damage (like sickness), it on occasion selects for damage too! The main reason is most mutations are damaging. Just put a creature in a radioactive environment to see this. The overwhelming majority of mutations are damaging. Selection can’t possibly select toward improvement if a huge number of changes via mutation are for the bad.
3. Natural selection can’t arrest the progress of damage in the genome. If all the offspring of the parents are more defective than the parents, cumulative selection won’t work as a matter of principle. Again, to drive home the point, consider creatures in a radioactive environment — each generation doesn’t get better even though there is survival of the fittest! This is sort of an amplified and sped up illustration of the fundamental problem of mutations being mostly bad or neutral at best.
If you want to see the math of this, look at:
Dawkins WEASEL doesn’t model any of these challenges, it totally ignores them.
stcordova,
We looked at evolution, and were so impressed we made genetic algorithms. These algorithms work incredibly well, and can take information from their environment and generate new information within themselves.
Even your Mungs and Joe Gs have effectively retreated to OOL, claiming that that is an insurmountable hurdle to ‘bootstrap’.
So did we model something that actually doesn’t work and yet amazingly our model does, or might you be wrong?
This is simply not true. Evolution works as a feedback system that tends to drive genetic variations towards a local maximum in the fitness landscape. As long as the environment stays relatively constant the average population fitness will stay near the peak. If the environment changes and the fitness peak moves the feedback process will drive the population towards the new local maximum. The only problems happen when the environment changes too rapidly or too drastically for the feedback loop to keep up. Then the population will go extinct.
More bullshit from Sal. The Dawkins Weasel program is a simple demonstration of the power of evolutionary mechanisms, variation filtered by selection. It was never meant to be a real world simulator. You can read about it here and try it here.
It was never meant to.
Still more bullshit from Sal. The Amazon is a good example of where humans are changing the environment faster and more drastically than the local flora and fauna can keep up. As a result many local species there are going extinct but it has nothing to do with Sal’s idiotic “genome degradation”.
Sal Cordova’s ignorance of actual evolutionary theory is staggering.
Sal’s stupid train keeps on chugging. When you create a huge number of mutations through radiation then the natural selection piece of the evolutionary process that happens every generation can’t keep up. Using Sal’s moronic reasoning is like saying water is bad for you because if you drink 100 gallons in a day you will die from water toxicity.
Sal saves the best stupidity for last. In the real world you don’t get all offspring having lower reproductive fitness than their parents, especially in a changing environment. You’ll always get some whose changes give them a better chance at survival. Those traits can and do accumulate. It’s been empirically demonstrated in the lab and in the field.
Seriously colewd, if you want to understand evolution and the Weasel program stay away from Cordova. His ignorance on all evolutionary topics is just dreadful.
Patrick,
Very few appear to want to know that.
stcordova,
You know there are many models in existence already, which are held to be consistent with lab and field work? How come you are the first to discover the ANNIHILATOR principle? Is the code available?
Adapa,
I’ve attempted very similar reasoning before. It tends to be ignored.
Patrick,
Evolutionism cannot be tested and few evolutionists have the education to understand that
Of course I could be wrong, I’m a creationist after all. 🙂
I hate disagreeing with my new found friends at TSZ, and as I said, at some level I almost wish I were wrong and the atheists and agnostics right…
Hence it doesn’t bother me as much at this stage in my life if I am wrong. Maybe that’s why I’m a little nicer than I used to be….
Anyway, when a human kills several plant species in the Brazilian rainforest, the extinct plants never recover to evolve more complexity since they are extinct.
Such extinction events would be like preventing certain GAs in the world from never running again ever. Say we have multiple GAs on multiple platforms — WEASEL, alaskan curloo, dodo bird, trilobite, Pyrenean Ibex, Passenger Pigeon — and then these GAs were never allowed to run again on any computer and evolve more complexity for these forms, that is what the problem of real extinction that is never modelled.
The names of the creatures listed above are extinct, most in the recent past (except WEASEL).
The GAs work because the problem of interspecies competition is avoided as a matter of principle, whereas in the real world GAs ae permanently shut down for species lines and there is no second chance to re-write the GA, rebooot the computer, and try again.
The other thing is the GAs like Dawkins WEASEL have small genomes relative to reproductive excess and mutation rate. Make the genomes gigantic — say a billion characters, give a mutation rate of 150 per individual per generation, and let each parent be limited to 10 offspring. The evolutionary train will go in reverse.
The math for this scenario began with Hermann Mulller, Larry Moran mentioned it when he criticised stuff I said, but he really didn’t disagree with my final numbers, in fact provided even a stronger case than I did with a mere genetic load of 2 when I was being generous with 6:
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-creationist-tries-to-understand.html
The YEC commenting in underground forum on the exchange between Moran and I were slapping each other in the back since Larry actually affirmed my essential point. Larry however says we tolerate the large mutation rate because most of the genome is junk. Larry “solution” would work if a very large fraction of the genome is junk, which would require that the 500 million dollar bet that the NIH is taking on behalf of ENCODE, Roadmap, E4 (Enabling the Exploration of the Eukaryotic Epitranscriptome), GWASs, etc. are all wrong.
I say, I hope the NIH is right, otherwise 500 million of our tax dollars have been wasted by the NIH.
Larry hates ENCODE, btw.
The value of ENCODE has nothing to do with the percentage if DNA that is junk.
Regarding selection favoring loss of complexity vs. gain in complexity, at least in the lab there seems to be evidence of this. Even Jerry Coyne felt Behe’s assessment of the issue as far as lab observations was mostly correct:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/behes-new-paper/
But if Behe was right, this is evidence against Dawkins WEASEL.
Does anyone know why Cordova has a wild hair up his butt over the Dawkins Weasel program? Weasel isn’t an evolution simulator. It’s a simple program to show how random variation and cumulative selection working together can produce beneficial results. Dawkins could have used a draw poker simulation with unlimited draws to show the same effect. It ain’t rocket science.
It takes a real fool to claim Weasel is a model of real world evolutionary scenarios with multiple species interacting in a complex, ever changing environment.
More important, what can possibly be proved by a program that doesn’t do something?
Lots of people have built GAs that model cumulative complexity. so if Sal has written one that can’t, so much the worse for Sal’ s programming skills.
petrushka,
GAs model directed evolution which is the antithesis of natural selection, drift and neutral changes, which are blind and mindless processes.
Oh, dear, Sal. This is an implied quotemine – no, you don’t actually quote Coyne indirectly, but you use the same quotemine structure “Even Jerry Coyne (evolutionist) agrees with us (ID/creationists) about mutation’s inability to provide new function”.
In order to imply that Coyne supports your position, you must have ignored all the paragraphs he wrote carefully explaining why Behe’s paper is not realistic, and the facts would not support the conclusion you draw from the paper.
[snipped only for length, author’s intent and meaning remains the same]
Bad reading, Sal, bad.
I’m sure that when Sal is teaching impressionable young minds, he provides them with a full account of Coyne’s argument, and not just a dishonest summary.
Dazz said:
Incorrect. The Euthyphro dilemma challenge is separate from the argument from morality. The dilemma is asking for a theistic premise that will solve it. I’ve provided one. The fact that I can solve the Euthyphro dilemma with a third theistic premise has nothing whatsoever to do with the argument from morality.
seems to indicate you are delusional.
Until you can at least imagine a world, time or place where torturing innocent children for fun is good, or where alleviating the needless, pointless suffering of the innocent is not good, then your rejection of (1) would fly in the face of what you (indeed, we all) know to be true.
Subsequently, until you can explain how such goodness can exist without it being a part of (for all intents and purposes) divine (creator) nature, your rejection of (2) is unsupported. I don’t see how (1) can be true without (2) also being true.
Guano?
I would never accuse you of being disingenuous. Just spectacularly wrong.
If I claimed (as some on UD have) to be smarter than Einstein, I would not be surprised to be called delusional.
Murray, Plato.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion
“A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or other effects of perception.”
That “strong evidence” is in the imagination of evolutionists, not in actual direct lab and field observations!
Sorry to disagree, but that’s imagination by evolutionists being promoted as actual evidence. Evidence in the lab takes priority over “evidence” in evolutionary imaginations.
Bullshit. The Euthyphro dilemma is meant to challenge the argument of morality, and it succeeds when it forces you to add a premise that is equivalent to the conclusion you were trying to get to. It forces you to self-destruct by making your argument circular. Religion has poisoned your mind so badly that you can’t see it, but it doesn’t change the fact that premises are not arguments and you have nothing.
I apologize everyone for going back and forth on this, obviously no amount of repetition will ever help poor Will figure it out, so I’ll let go here
Nice projection
The bad reading claim is independent of the rightness or wrongness of Coyne’s argument.
You have incorrectly summarized Coyne as agreeing with you. As for lab observations, try reading Coyne.
I’m sure your claim to be the biological child of your legal parents is also imaginary, since you were not witness to your own conception.
It’s always interesting to see creationists and IDists claim to be smarter than everyone.
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20160108205447/http://www.timecube.com/
What the hell is that? LOL
It’s what I think of when I see creationists arguing with Jerry Coyne or Larry Moran.
R.I.P. Time Cube.
Time Cube guy wasn’t allowed to set up an information table at the United Methodist Conference.
Showing that the Methodist leadership has made an unwritten pact with materialists and apostates who deny time’s three-dimensionality.
Meanwhile, none of the IDists has been able to explain the vertically-derivative nature of life lacking much horizontal transfer of DNA. All of the sound and fury about everything else somehow doesn’t change the fact that the order in biology that we see is entailed by the non-magic of reproduction and isn’t reasonable, let alone entailed, via intelligence.
Now back to creationist irrelevance…
Glen Davidson
I guess what I find most fascinating about IDists and creationists is the fact that they openly mock the work of tens of thousands of actual scientists — calling their conclusions imaginary — but so desperately crave their approval that they will post mined quotes (from the same guys they are ridiculing) as evidence that the great scientists agree with them.
The relationship that creationists have with intellectual authority is so much like the relationship of an abused child to his abusing parent. A strange brew of fear and dependence.
I think they fear that their ignorance will result in their irrelevance.
Not unlikely, in fact.
Glen Davidson
How did you decide there were only two?
Thank you for not sending Salvador off on a black swan hunt. I was so tempted.