Faulty Logic of Creationists/IDers

[palmera]

While reading The God Delusion, I came upon a passage in which Dawkins aptly describes one of the major flaws of creationist/I.D. attacks against evolutionary theory. It centers on the "unfortunate" strategy of said opponents to point out gaps in scientific knowledge, then claim that Intelligent Design fills those gaps. For example, an IDer might take a particular part of an organism, claim that its irreducibly complex, and when a comprehensive answer is not immediately given, assert that evolutionary theory has been overthrown in favor of "God did it." There are many problems with this line of reasoning. First, it doesn't follow to argue that because a particular part of theory A fails, then theory B is correct. Furthermore, the driving force behind scientific inquiry is ignorance. Rather than assume B, that God did it through design, a scientist, driven by curiosity will take a critical approach and study said problem. Unfortunately, during the intermediate period, ID pamphlets will proclaim an organism to be IC (irreducibly complex) thus disproving evolution. As Dawkins states, "Intelligent Design -ID- is granted a Get Out of Jail Free card, a charmed immunity to the rigorous demands made of evolution."

This of course goes without saying that interjecting an intelligent supreme being into the mix is in itself faulty logic because it raises far more questions than it answers!

What do you think?

[QED]

achilles12604, it looks as though you took the trouble to follow up Smolin's hypotheses about Cosmic Natural Selection. I appreciate it if you did. Whether or not the theory itself is correct is moot. The real significance (which I hope you didn't miss) is that it was framed in such a way as to be testable. I would be interested in knowing what value (if any)you place upon testability, and how this plays with your belief in God.

I think you've revealed here a rather clear-cut choice regarding the possible existence of multiple universes; if this is the only extant universe ever then we would indeed be struggling to explain its characteristics. The choice seems stark then; we could either propose a super-intelligent-designer-creator-being existing outside our universe (after all, the being had to exist somewhere before the universe was created) or we could propose a metauniverse from which universes like ours (and an infinitude of others that have different characteristics) originate.

I'm afraid to say it looks awfully like you're just hand waving away the latter possibility, which I think would be very hard to justify given our poor record on getting up-to-speed on similar matters in the past. After all, it wasn't until Edwin Hubble used the 100 inch telescope on Mt. Wilson to finally provide enough data to convince the world of astronomy that some visible objects were galaxies beyond our own. Before the 1920's people thought everything in the universe lay within our particular galaxy.

We're trying then to be reasonable. We have a highly accurate model of the physics of our own universe -- from which we can understand even the most exotic features presented to us (such as black-holes) and have great confidence in the timetable of symmetry breaking that instantiated our own set of physical laws and forces. It is from all this carefully extracted data that cosmologists are able to construct numerous models incorporating additional universes which remain compatible with the the rules we already know. This is what you are attempting to cast aside as wild speculation in order to make room for your preferred explanation. Can you appreciate that you need to do more than you have to make God seem more plausible?

[Cogitoergosum]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipuwer_papyrus

This is a non-Christian site which explains things fairly well. As I pointed out on another thread of yours there are various levels of "proof". Having compared the symbols myself on another website, I am convinced that this is a decent allusion to events recorded in Exodus. I actually do not think that Exodus occurred exactly as described in the bible. So in short, giving a certain margin of error on both sides, this ancient document is good enough for me.

Achilles i'm surprised, i went on that link and all i found was arguments against that papyrus referring to the Exodus, wrong date, wrong set of plagues, no mention of dying first borns. It just doesn't fit. maybe u posted the wrong link.

Your analogy isn't very accurate. This is a good example of a non-thiest exaggerating the "evils" of the bible to suit their own preconceptions.
Nuking all of iraq would have caused millions of deaths and totally destroyed all the major cities and left the country incapable of survival afterwards.
This wasn't the result with Egypt. I doubt that even a thousand individuals died during the passing of the Angels or whatever it was. The cities were not destroyed. The civilization of the Egyptians not only survived but remained as a "superpower" for hundreds of years afterwards.

The fact that the angels did not destroy proprety does not show better character i 'd rather destoy a whole city with no one dying than kill a single human being. that's no argument, egypt was a super power and every first born murdered would make tens of thousands of victims which in that time's world population would be equivalent to millions in today's population. If there is a grandfather alive in egypt then the angels killed his first born and his son's first child.

Well I can think of a couple reasons why it was a good idea to do things this way

1) The Hebrew nation grew stronger and united as a result
2) The Hebrew nation learned from their experience in the desert
3) The Hebrew nation was granted an opportunity to learn about God, his powers and desires for them
4) The Egyptians were not severely harmed by this method.
5) The Hebrew nation was able to make a reputation for themselves among their neighbors as a strong nation, not to be trifled with

do u mean that the end justifies the means no matter how barbaric it is?

Now you think you can choose better than God how to do things? Well I offer you a chance to prove this. You present a better method of accomplishing the task at hand and I will sit here and throw hypothetical wrenches into your plans. Since the "what ifs" are limitless for any situation you provide as a "what if" I will be able to provide a counter "what if" until we have wasted numerous pages on what "should" god have done.

I definetly can do it better than your god, all he had to do was make the pharaon be convinced that he should let them go. This way no one would had died, all that god would have done would be twist somebody's free will without that somebody knowing it, which would be far better than genocide. since he broke his own rule anyway when he killed people, it would have been better that he broke his rule of free will (which anyway does not exist if u believe in an all knowing god), then breaking his rule of "do not kill". But maybe GOD is not that smart to see the consequence of his action.

Example: You say that God could have simply miracled the Hebrew nation out of Egypt leaving a speechless pharaoh to his laundry.

I now say, God couldn't have done that for several reasons.

1)God has always had a policy of not forcing those who reject him to worship him. God's direct intervention on the level of teleportation of thousands of people, would have been overly convincing to pharaoh that he was in fact real and thus Pharos would have been compelled into submission thus negating his free will to follow God on his own.

And sending thousands of angels to commit murder is not as convincing in ur opinion? in mine it is more convincing. Again better negate one person's free will than kill thousands.

2) The area where the Hebrew’s were teleported into would have the same problem as number one.

3) The kings around the area they teleported into would have been so afraid of the Hebrews that they probably would have gotten together to destroy this perceived threat, rather than allowing the Hebrews to fight them one by one as recorded in the bible. With their combined strength and surrounding the Hebrews from whence they were dropped, they would have killed them all.

irrelevant if god is allmighty he would have made it work.

4) Teleportation may be a logical impossibility so the suggestion may be academic.

u mean it is impossible for god to teleporte people? i thought he was omnipotent and he could do anything.


my bad if u were talking about the origin of the universe and not life. Cause for life on earth natural selection does the trick.
As for the beginning of the universe, multiverse is a theory between multiple, they might prove to some ridiculous today and be proven true later. God is one of those theory supported only by the scriptures. Like the multiverse theory is supported by its writer and those who follow him.
If one theory proves wrong then it is not GOD by default that we should thank for the wonders of the universe. There are still other theories.
let's imagine a theist and a non theist having a debate in the 12th century about GOd.
theist: well what makes the mountain spitt fire (volcano)?
atheist: i don't know
theist: it's GOD punishing people for their sins

theist: what makes thunder?
atheist: i don't know
theist: well it's GOD warning us not to sin

Catch my drift? not everything we don't have an answer for, the answer by default is god.

[Furrowed Brow]

Hi achilles12604

Now . . . if I totally missed what you were referring to as "other options" then feel free to ignore everything I wrote about and please elaborate.

I really had in mind arguments from biology that say the probability of such and such occurring are a very large number.

I have previously been involved in a brief debate over this kind of point centred on David Swift I was also specifically thinking of the Stepping Stone Argument which was introduced into another debate by Otseng, and which I gave a critique at Post 64 - Microevolution v macroevolution

The form of the criticism runs the same. ID type arguments say some chemical/biological structure X solves some problem Y. However the possibility of X occurring in nature is astronomically improbable. Thus Nature did not produce X by herself.
Sadly that conclusion fails to divide that astronomically large number by the set Z which contains all the other possible solutions, and partial solutions to the problem Y for which X is the example solution. Admittedly, the contents of Z may be unknown. But invariable it will be large, nay even astronomically large. The pertinent point is that the real probability is unknown until the full calculation is completed. Without completion those astronomically huge improbabilities cited against blind design become meaningless and are a bogus argument. And as arguments for improbability are key to ID, this is pretty much a fatal flaw to their case.

So we are left with ID and its huge numbers which are countered by a multitude of totally unproven and founded hypothesis' any of which could end up supporting God even more depending on what science finds in the future.

Otseng said something similar I recall. But this is not a case of evolutionist think the maths should be done this way, but ID guys think the maths should be done that way. To get the statistics right you have to multiply the astronomically small improbability of X, by set Z. If the contents of Z cannot be quantified then you cannot complete the calculation. Thus the large numbers are bogus.

PS - ID'rs (at least all the ones I read regularly) accept evolution. So I don't understand how your last paragraph is valid.

Well I'm not sure about that. I guess the ID guys might say something like we accept evolution, and are only pointing out it has limits which can only be explained by ID. But I think that is a bit disingenuous. Those limits only arise with bogus math and an unwillingness to accept the logic of arguments of the form of the Blind Watchmaker. Arguments which if you don't accept their full power to explain, means you at least have some reservations about evolution. But reservations based on bogus improbabilities or something else....?

OOPS. Yet again things have become confused.

Is it me? Really someone tell me if it is me that keeps getting things confused. I was talking with COG about this same thing and the same thing happened.

I was referring to the origin of the universe. NOT evolution.

Check out the excerpt from the debate I posted. Or better yet check out the whole debate.

MOST of my ID arguments concern the origin of the universe. NOT evolution.

I don't know why I start to talk about the origin of the universe and the HUGE numbers (compiled by an atheist Hawkings by the way) and all of a sudden the non-theists are discussion evolution yet again.
*sigh*

Ok one more time . . .


I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH MOST OF THE TEACHINGS ABOUT EVOLUTION!!!!

I'm beginning to think that non-theists here don't actually read what I write. I really don't think they do. This is the only reason I can find for me introducing evidence of the origin of the universe and them going off on a tangent about Evolution.

Please, someone just read what I write first. Then respond.

Sorry achilles12604,

I think we were talking at tangents. It is just that ID is usually associated with biology and evolution. So That might explain why the discourse goes in that direction.

Anyway. I'm not a huge fan of multiverses. So if someone came up with a proof against, I'd not be disappointed. that said I think you point is that we know there is one universe with life. And out of all those other possible universes we know of none that could contain life. Therefore the odds against life are astronomically huge. (Please correct me If I've got you wrong.) Well the same principle applies. you have to multiply the odds of this universe occurring by the total number of possible universe that also have life. But of course we cannot do that calculation. So the huge improbability is another meaningless number.

But lets just talk about this universe. What are the odds of life occurring? improbable low, or quite high. Well if there is just us staring out at the stars and all those galaxies, then very very low. but if there is life elsewhere in this unverse then the odds come down.

[Cryopyre]

There you go, everything I've ever tried to pen down but failed served up nice and clean. This is a perfect example of the failure of logic in creationism, and I praise the writer.

[QED]

Anyway. I'm not a huge fan of multiverses. So if someone came up with a proof against, I'd not be disappointed.

I agree, it would be just as interesting to know that this is the only space-time there is. But just to be clear on this matter, the "multiverse" can manifest itself in a variety of different ways. For example, the universe that we are familiar with is divided into the portion that we are in light-speed contact with and some remainder -- more of which is revealed to us observationally as time goes on. This remainder represents an additional state space which we have to take account of in any probabilistic analysis. While it might seem to provide us with the "softest" form of multiverse data from WMAP is giving us figures for Omega which are indicative of a colossal extension to the state space available to the Weak Anthropic Principle.

Hawking's Universal Wave-function and the Everett interpretation of Quantum Mechanics both represent altogether different forms of multiverse whereby the state space is also greatly magnified. And then there are the Solutions to Einsteins equations which allow for a nexus of branching universes through distortions in space-time. Speculation it may be at this point, but I fail to see how we can so easily depreciate the multiverse concept when it is so compatible with so much data.

[palmera]

achilles12604,
I understand how frustrated you must be, so let's talk about origins. I assume, as an IDer, you see God as the uncaused cause at the end of a seemingly endless regress back in time to the origins of the universe. But simply calling a starting point God doesn't satisfy the intellect because it raises far more questions than it answers. Even though, theologically it's nice and tidy, using God to fill the gap in the beginning not only creates a whole new infinite regress but inherently stunts any attempt to figure out our origins. Instead, postulating a singularity opens a new chapter of research and analysis to figure out the origins of the universe.
Also, while Dawkins concedes the possibility of a God, as do most atheists (like myself) I presume, the whole premiss is unprovable. While one can say with great likelihood that a supreme being existing outside of space-time is extremely unlikely, one can never disprove it; the same way one cannot disprove that there is a Giant Spaghetti Monster supreme being or to take an example Dawkins uses, a tiny teapot revolving around the earth that just happens to be too small for our telescopes to pick up. This is part of the reason why placing God at the beginning of the universe is so unsatisfying and unreasonable to scientific inquiry into the origin of the universe.

[achilles12604]

achilles12604,
I understand how frustrated you must be, so let's talk about origins. I assume, as an IDer, you see God as the uncaused cause at the end of a seemingly endless regress back in time to the origins of the universe. But simply calling a starting point God doesn't satisfy the intellect because it raises far more questions than it answers. Even though, theologically it's nice and tidy, using God to fill the gap in the beginning not only creates a whole new infinite regress but inherently stunts any attempt to figure out our origins. Instead, postulating a singularity opens a new chapter of research and analysis to figure out the origins of the universe.
Also, while Dawkins concedes the possibility of a God, as do most atheists (like myself) I presume, the whole premiss is unprovable. While one can say with great likelihood that a supreme being existing outside of space-time is extremely unlikely, one can never disprove it; the same way one cannot disprove that there is a Giant Spaghetti Monster supreme being or to take an example Dawkins uses, a tiny teapot revolving around the earth that just happens to be too small for our telescopes to pick up. This is part of the reason why placing God at the beginning of the universe is so unsatisfying and unreasonable to scientific inquiry into the origin of the universe.

Very well summed up.

Let me address each idea in turn.

I understand how frustrated you must be, so let's talk about origins. I assume, as an IDer, you see God as the uncaused cause at the end of a seemingly endless regress back in time to the origins of the universe.

This is fairly accurate.

But simply calling a starting point God doesn't satisfy the intellect because it raises far more questions than it answers. Even though, theologically it's nice and tidy, using God to fill the gap in the beginning not only creates a whole new infinite regress but inherently stunts any attempt to figure out our origins. Instead, postulating a singularity opens a new chapter of research and analysis to figure out the origins of the universe.

Science is always looking for the why. I actually hammered this subject out with an atheist co-worker and I came to a conclusion I feel very comfortable with.

On a scientific level I agree with you whole heartedly. Since science is always looking for what it can examine and test, once they reach a satisfactory conclusion they stop looking.

Theology on the other hand answers they why's and what if's that don't even apply to science.

Basically I concluded that even if science were to reach the point where they knew everything which occurred at the beginning of the universe, God would still have a place simply because he would be the why behind everything science had discovered. The "first cause" can go on until we have total knowledge about events surrounding the big bang. However, once they have established what did in fact occur, this still doesn't kill God.

Science and Theology are not contradictory. I really hate the "God of Gaps" approach because it isn't really very accurate. I point out over and over that if God does exist, then he did whatever he did regardless of what we discover. Just because we hhavedetermined the "how" doesn't mean that God suddenly wasn't acting there. Therefore God isn't a "gap" filler, but rather an overriding presence covering all that occurred, both what we don't understand, and what we have discovered. This is what may separate me from traditional ID views.

Also, while Dawkins concedes the possibility of a God, as do most atheists (like myself) I presume, the whole premiss is unprovable. While one can say with great likelihood that a supreme being existing outside of space-time is extremely unlikely, one can never disprove it; the same way one cannot disprove that there is a Giant Spaghetti Monster supreme being or to take an example Dawkins uses, a tiny teapot revolving around the earth that just happens to be too small for our telescopes to pick up.

As I pointed out above, science can not prove, nor disprove God. So on this I agree totally with you.

I used an analogy somewhere else on this forum.

Humans are like a very small man, inside of a paper bag. We have been given a flashlight (science) which grows more powerful all the time. However, at no time will our wonderful flashlight ever be able to see the child outside the bag. It isn't possible. The person can explore all over the place and discover everything about everything around him. He can feel that he has total knowledge of everything. However, this is simply because his "tools" are unable to detect anything outside of its limitations, (the bag)

This holds true for God in a similar fashion.

So I agree that science will never be able to prove or disprove God. And I still have no issues with this. There are many things which science will never understand, even within our own universe and beings, so why should I give up believing in other things science is unable to comment on?

[QED]

Basically I concluded that even if science were to reach the point where they knew everything which occurred at the beginning of the universe, God would still have a place simply because he would be the why behind everything science had discovered. The "first cause" can go on until we have total knowledge about events surrounding the big bang. However, once they have established what did in fact occur, this still doesn't kill God.

You appear to be ignoring the work of certain Cosmologists. "No boundary proposals" present us with

Science and Theology are not contradictory. I really hate the "God of Gaps" approach because it isn't really very accurate. I point out over and over that if God does exist, then he did whatever he did regardless of what we discover. Just because we hhavedetermined the "how" doesn't mean that God suddenly wasn't acting there. Therefore God isn't a "gap" filler, but rather an overriding presence covering all that occurred, both what we don't understand, and what we have discovered. This is what may separate me from traditional ID views.

Also, while Dawkins concedes the possibility of a God, as do most atheists (like myself) I presume, the whole premiss is unprovable. While one can say with great likelihood that a supreme being existing outside of space-time is extremely unlikely, one can never disprove it; the same way one cannot disprove that there is a Giant Spaghetti Monster supreme being or to take an example Dawkins uses, a tiny teapot revolving around the earth that just happens to be too small for our telescopes to pick up.

As I pointed out above, science can not prove, nor disprove God. So on this I agree totally with you.

I used an analogy somewhere else on this forum.

Humans are like a very small man, inside of a paper bag. We have been given a flashlight (science) which grows more powerful all the time. However, at no time will our wonderful flashlight ever be able to see the child outside the bag. It isn't possible. The person can explore all over the place and discover everything about everything around him. He can feel that he has total knowledge of everything. However, this is simply because his "tools" are unable to detect anything outside of its limitations, (the bag)

This holds true for God in a similar fashion.

So I agree that science will never be able to prove or disprove God. And I still have no issues with this. There are many things which science will never understand, even within our own universe and beings, so why should I give up believing in other things science is unable to comment on?[/quote]

[WelshBoy]

As I pointed out above, science can not prove, nor disprove God.

While most people will agree that it is nigh on impossible to disprove God's existence, what basis do you have for claiming science cannot prove his existence?

God is meant to be able to intercede in human affairs, and so while he is 'outside of the bag' to hark back to your analogy, he can shake the bag if he wants, or prod it, or tear it open or any number of manipulations. THIS we would be able to study and measure.

Several studies have looked at the power of prayer for the healing of the sick, and unfortunately there are conflicting results. I would suggest that this is a very bad sort of thing to use as a measure of 'intercession', wellness is often a very subjective measure (i.e. how well do you feel), and the efficacy of treatments are largely dependent on the patient in question.

Much simpler would be something like praying for god to make a light bulb glow in the absence of an electrical current. The expected results are either on or off. No interpretation is required or involved.

Or perhaps another Elijah style pray-off should be undertaken between the major religions?



Regards

Luke

[Ncik666]

The fact is it may seem like the universe is perfect for us but another universe with different systems may be perfect for another kind of life. What a lot of people keep forgeting is that on another planet they may not have water, that doesn't mean that there can't be life, just not life like ours. Infinite adaptivity is what Evolution and natural selection is all about.