| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"david ford" |
| Date: |
25 Dec 2004 12:08:43 PM |
| Object: |
Re: Baptist Press slanders Flew? Hardly. |
rich hammett wrote:
Minä suojelen sinua kaikelta, mitä ikinä keksitkin sanoa, P.G.:
"rich hammett" <bubbarichau@warmmail.com> wrote in message
news:10slnuid9dde95f@corp.supernews.com...
Well, not entirely slanders, but certainly, er, makes a
better story for themselves:
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=19780
Slanders? I didn't read anything close to slander.
Sure, they say he's becoming more like them. If you
know BP, you'd know that's an insult!
More seriously, I note that the strongest statements
they have about Flew's beliefs are either editorial insertions
or second-hand. If Flew really _is_ "impressed with
the arguments for the resurrection", whatever that means,
then he's fairly dim.
[2004 Flew]"The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed
miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality
and quantity, I think, from the evidence offered for the occurrence of
most other supposedly miraculous events. But you must remember that I
approached it after considerable reading of reports of psychical
research and its criticisms. This showed me how quickly evidence of
remarkable and supposedly miraculous events can be discredited."
And the other statement by
Habermas: "He wrote me a long letter, quite an incredible letter,
where at several points he conceded the evidence for [theism
and Christianity]." That's not even Habermas' words, at least
not "Christianity." Nothing else I've seen from Flew indicates
any concessions towards the evidence for Christianity.
[2004 Flew]"This raises the possibility of what my philosophical
contemporaries in the heyday of Gilbert Ryle would have described as a
knock-down falsification of Islam: something which is most certainly not
possible in the case of Christianity."
Ref for the Flew:
http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/
It also doesn't address the really, really lame part of
Flew's actual beliefs, which is that he thinks the world
and life are too complex to come into existence on the
basis of physical laws, so he posits something MORE
complex to explain everything...
An answer to the often-asked question of why,
unlike the universe, the designer(s) of the universe
doesn't need a cause(s) of its existence appears in
section 12 of:
The Search for a Loophole to the Beginning of the Universe
in the Big Bang and to the Seeming-Design of Physics
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005292327160.25513-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
John, if you're reading, I never saw you address this
(to me) fairly obvious and gaping weakness in his
thinking. Did you?
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| User: "rich hammett" |
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| Title: Re: Baptist Press slanders Flew? Hardly. |
26 Dec 2004 03:40:48 PM |
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In talk.origins david ford <dford3@gl.umbc.edu> sanoi, hitaasti kuin hämähäkki:
rich hammett wrote:
[snip]
It also doesn't address the really, really lame part of
Flew's actual beliefs, which is that he thinks the world
and life are too complex to come into existence on the
basis of physical laws, so he posits something MORE
complex to explain everything...
An answer to the often-asked question of why,
unlike the universe, the designer(s) of the universe
doesn't need a cause(s) of its existence appears in
section 12 of:
The Search for a Loophole to the Beginning of the Universe
in the Big Bang and to the Seeming-Design of Physics
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005292327160.25513-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
There's a reason I asked John, and not David Ford. And yet, for
some insane reason, probably because I'm supposed to be
finishing up an extremely important project, I read your
reference.
You apparently did not understand MY problem with Flew's
reasoning, and I think you may have misunderstood part
of the whole First Cause argument. I don't know about
the classical greeks who thought about it, John can fill
me in with actual knowledge, but when I try to trace back
to "first cause," I do not restrict myself to tracing along
a time axis. In fact, I am explicitly NOT tracing along
a time axis, but rather along a chain of philosophic
necessity. Something like "Is the existence of a cause
for this effect required, and if so, what form might that
cause take?"
This undermines your entire and IMO simplistic approach
to the question.
rich
--
-to reply, it's hot not warm
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
\ Rich Hammett http://home.hiwaay.net/~rhammett
/ "Better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world;
\ than the pride that divides
/ when a colorful rag is unfurled."
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| User: "david ford" |
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| Title: Re: Baptist Press slanders Flew? Hardly. |
27 Dec 2004 09:09:06 AM |
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rich hammett wrote:
In talk.origins david ford <dford3@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
rich hammett wrote:
[snip]
It also doesn't address the really, really lame part of
Flew's actual beliefs, which is that he thinks the world
and life are too complex to come into existence on the
basis of physical laws, so he posits something MORE
complex to explain everything...
An answer to the often-asked question of why,
unlike the universe, the designer(s) of the universe
doesn't need a cause(s) of its existence appears in
section 12 of:
The Search for a Loophole to the Beginning of the Universe
in the Big Bang and to the Seeming-Design of Physics
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005292327160.25513-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
There's a reason I asked John, and not David Ford.
What reason was that?
Is it that John gives you answers you like to hear, while David Ford
doesn't?
And yet, for
some insane reason, probably because I'm supposed to be
finishing up an extremely important project, I read your
reference.
You apparently did not understand MY problem with Flew's
reasoning, and I think you may have misunderstood part
of the whole First Cause argument. I don't know about
the classical greeks who thought about it, John can fill
me in with actual knowledge, but when I try to trace back
to "first cause," I do not restrict myself to tracing along
a time axis. In fact, I am explicitly NOT tracing along
a time axis, but rather along a chain of philosophic
necessity. Something like "Is the existence of a cause
for this effect required, and if so, what form might that
cause take?"
When you say [rh]"effect," are you saying "that which is caused by a
cause"? Because if so, your question [rh]"'Is the existence of a cause
for this effect required, and if so, what form might that cause take?'"
can be rephrased as "Is the existence of a cause required for this thing
that is caused by a cause?"
You might as well ask, "Is this bachelor unmarried?" and "Does this
triangle have 3 sides?"
Are you aware of any counterexamples to this statement?:
Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning to exist.
If someone told you that something began to exist without there being a
cause(s) of its beginning to exist, would you believe that person?
Under what conceivable basis would you accept the claim that something
began to exist without having had a cause(s) of its beginning to exist?
Did you assume that the God of theism or deism must have been an
"effect" (would if true would have meant that the God of theism or deism
must have had a cause)?
This undermines your entire and IMO simplistic approach
to the question.
When Dawkins made these remarks-- particularly the last sentence-- was
he being [rh]"simplistic"?:
Dawkins, Richard. 1987. _The Blind Watchmaker: Why the
evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design_
(NY: W.W. Norton & Company), 332+15pp. Two
paragraphs on 141:
So, cumulative selection can manufacture complexity
while single-step selection cannot. But cumulative
selection cannot work unless there is some minimal
machinery of replication and replicator power, and the
only machinery of replication that we know seems too
complicated to have come into existence by means of
anything less than many generations of cumulative
selection! Some people see this as a fundamental flaw
in the whole theory of the blind watchmaker. They see
it as the ultimate proof that there must originally have
been a designer, not a _blind_ watchmaker but a
far-sighted supernatural watchmaker. Maybe, it is
argued, the Creator does not control the day-to-day
succession of evolutionary events; maybe he did not
frame the tiger and the lamb, maybe he did not make a
tree, but he _did_ set up the original machinery of
replication and replicator power, the original machinery
of DNA and protein that made cumulative selection, and
hence all of evolution, possible.
This is a transparently feeble argument, indeed it is
obviously self-defeating. Organized complexity is the
thing that we are having difficulty in explaining. Once
we are allowed simply to _postulate_ organized
complexity, if only the organized complexity of the
DNA/ protein replicating engine, it is relatively easy to
invoke it as a generator of yet more organized
complexity. That, indeed, is what most of this book is
about. But of course any God capable of intelligently
designing something as complex as the DNA/protein
replicating machine must have been at least as complex
and organized as that machine itself. Far more so if we
suppose him _additionally_ capable of such advanced
functions as listening to prayers and forgiving sins. To
explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by
invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely
nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the
Designer. You have to say some-thing like 'God was
always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy
way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always
there', or 'Life was always there', and be done with it.
The universe began to exist (see big bang URL above). Therefore,
whatever resides within the universe (for example, biology) began to exist.
[rh]"John can fill me in with actual knowledge"
Do you consider this claim by John to be correct?:
[John Wilkins, during a commentary on Flew's newfound deism, at
http://evolvethought.blogspot.com/2004/12/one-flew-over-deists-nest.html
]"replicators are a *sufficient* cause of evolution, but they are not,
in my opinion, *necessary* for it. And if they are not necessary for it
(and in particular not necessary for natural selection) then they can
themselves evolve using ordinary Darwinian processes of optimisation of
fidelity of reproduction by selection."
.
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| User: "Danny Kodicek" |
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| Title: Re: Baptist Press slanders Flew? Hardly. |
27 Dec 2004 10:18:18 AM |
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"david ford" <dford3@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:dford3-33ao02F3u3pggU1@individual.net...
If someone told you that something began to exist without there being a
cause(s) of its beginning to exist, would you believe that person?
Under what conceivable basis would you accept the claim that something
began to exist without having had a cause(s) of its beginning to exist?
Is there 'a cause' for a die coming up 6? It's a combination of many
individual and essentially independent circumstances. Is there 'a cause' for
the shape of a snowflake? For the growth pattern of a particular tree? Is
there 'a cause' for your having your particular DNA signature? Depending on
your view of the universe as entirely deterministic or indeterminate, these
are either the cause of an vast number of micro-events, ultimately
determined exactly but non-measurably by the precise configuration of the
Universe at the Big Bang, or a vast number of fundamentally random (or
non-computable) quantum events. I wouldn't say that either way there is 'a
cause'.
If you want to define God as the 'first cause', then perhaps you could
espouse the view that God caused the Big Bang precisely in order to create
the Universe in such a way that it runs exactly the way it does. By all
means do - it does not affect scientific reasoning or any of the facts in
any way; it certainly doesn't invalidate evolution. Alternatively, you could
choose to say that God is responsible for everything that happens anywhere
in the Universe. If so then he has a remarkably boring job, since everything
we have so far measured appears to obey consistent rules (of course, there
are always some seeming anomalies on the fringes of measurement, which drive
refinements of theory). Otherwise, you could say the Universe is mechanical,
but allow for miracles, but then the 'first cause' argument doesn't hold any
more. For many if not most events, including 'something beginning to exist'
(whatever that means), there is no 'cause' (or a vast number of interacting
causes, depending on how you define 'cause').
Danny
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| User: "david ford" |
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| Title: Re: Baptist Press slanders Flew? Hardly. |
27 Dec 2004 03:18:24 PM |
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Danny Kodicek wrote:
"david ford" <dford3@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:dford3-33ao02F3u3pggU1@individual.net...
If someone told you that something began to exist without there being a
cause(s) of its beginning to exist, would you believe that person?
Under what conceivable basis would you accept the claim that something
began to exist without having had a cause(s) of its beginning to exist?
Is there 'a cause' for a die coming up 6?
There are causes of such.
Also, intelligence is needed for a pair of dice to begin to exist.
It's a combination of many
individual and essentially independent circumstances. Is there 'a
cause' for
the shape of a snowflake?
There are causes of such.
For the growth pattern of a particular tree?
There are causes of such.
Is
there 'a cause' for your having your particular DNA signature?
There are causes of such.
Also, intelligence is needed for the origination of
nucleotide-sequence-bearing-meaning material coding for humans.
Depending on
your view of the universe as entirely deterministic or indeterminate,
these
are either the cause of an vast number of micro-events, ultimately
determined exactly but non-measurably by the precise configuration of the
Universe at the Big Bang, or a vast number of fundamentally random (or
non-computable) quantum events. I wouldn't say that either way there
is 'a
cause'.
Suppose I create a magazine article. How on earth could the appearance
of that magazine article be the end result of events [DK]"ultimately
determined exactly but non-measurably by the precise configuration of
the Universe at the Big Bang, or a vast number of fundamentally random
(or non-computable) quantum events"?
In your view, would it be accurate to say that I "caused" to appear that
magazine article?
If you want to define God as the 'first cause', then perhaps you could
espouse the view that God caused the Big Bang precisely in order to
create
the Universe in such a way that it runs exactly the way it does. By all
means do - it does not affect scientific reasoning or any of the facts in
any way; it certainly doesn't invalidate evolution.
Meaning of [DK]"evolution"?
Alternatively, you could
choose to say that God is responsible for everything that happens
anywhere
in the Universe.
I just looked out the window. I wouldn't say that God "caused" me to
look out the window.
Suppose someone decided to kill his pet dog. I wouldn't say that God
"caused" this person to kill that dog.
Do you think that that man's killing of the dog was [DK]"ultimately
determined exactly but non-measurably by the precise configuration of
the Universe at the Big Bang, or a vast number of fundamentally random
(or non-computable) quantum events"?
If so then he has a remarkably boring job, since everything
we have so far measured appears to obey consistent rules (of course,
there
are always some seeming anomalies on the fringes of measurement,
which drive
refinements of theory).
What are some of these [DK]"consistent rules"?
Is the statement "life comes from pre-existing life" one of these
[DK]"consistent rules"?
Otherwise, you could say the Universe is mechanical,
but allow for miracles, but then the 'first cause' argument doesn't
hold any
more.
Meaning of [DK]"mechanical" and [DK]"miracles"?
For many if not most events, including 'something beginning to exist'
(whatever that means), there is no 'cause' (or a vast number of
interacting
causes, depending on how you define 'cause').
What are two events for which you think there are no causes of those
events' occurrence?
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| User: "Danny Kodicek" |
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| Title: Re: Baptist Press slanders Flew? Hardly. |
27 Dec 2004 04:00:16 PM |
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"david ford" <dford3@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:dford3-33bdkgF3oro01U1@individual.net...
Danny Kodicek wrote:
"david ford" <dford3@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:dford3-33ao02F3u3pggU1@individual.net...
If someone told you that something began to exist without there being a
cause(s) of its beginning to exist, would you believe that person?
Under what conceivable basis would you accept the claim that something
began to exist without having had a cause(s) of its beginning to exist?
Is there 'a cause' for a die coming up 6?
Okay, I want to make this clear: this is the last time I'll respond to one
of your posts unless you make a clear statement of your own ideas and/or
opinions, rather than simply querying or quoting those of others.
There are causes of such.
My point exactly: 'causes' plural.
Also, intelligence is needed for a pair of dice to begin to exist.
Irrelevant to my point
Also, intelligence is needed for the origination of
nucleotide-sequence-bearing-meaning material coding for humans.
er... a moot point, surely?
Depending on
your view of the universe as entirely deterministic or indeterminate,
these
are either the cause of an vast number of micro-events, ultimately
determined exactly but non-measurably by the precise configuration of
the
Universe at the Big Bang, or a vast number of fundamentally random (or
non-computable) quantum events. I wouldn't say that either way there
is 'a
cause'.
Suppose I create a magazine article. How on earth could the appearance
of that magazine article be the end result of events [DK]"ultimately
determined exactly but non-measurably by the precise configuration of
the Universe at the Big Bang, or a vast number of fundamentally random
(or non-computable) quantum events"?
Because unpredictable complexity at a macroscopic (or higher) level can
result from predictable and/or emergent rules at a lower level. (FWIW, which
is nothing, my money is on the deterministic model, but I don't believe it
actually makes a fundamental difference for anything on a human scale, or
not yet anyway). And semi-paradoxically, predictable patterns can emerge at
a higher-level still (eg, although we can't predict the small-scale features
of intelligent alien life, I would predict that they will find similar
solutions to day-to-day problems, eg they'll have some means of creating a
permanent record of information just as we have printing). Read Ian Stewart
and Jack Cohen's masterful 'The Collapse of Chaos'.
In your view, would it be accurate to say that I "caused" to appear that
magazine article?
Depends on your level of description. If you look deep enough, 'I-ness'
dissolves.
If you want to define God as the 'first cause', then perhaps you could
espouse the view that God caused the Big Bang precisely in order to
create
the Universe in such a way that it runs exactly the way it does. By all
means do - it does not affect scientific reasoning or any of the facts
in
any way; it certainly doesn't invalidate evolution.
Meaning of [DK]"evolution"?
Oh shut up. You know perfectly well.
Alternatively, you could
choose to say that God is responsible for everything that happens
anywhere
in the Universe.
I just looked out the window. I wouldn't say that God "caused" me to
look out the window.
Suppose someone decided to kill his pet dog. I wouldn't say that God
"caused" this person to kill that dog.
Well then, what *did* cause it? If God is your first cause, then ultimately
he did. Either we have free will, in which case God is *not* the first
cause, or we don't, in which case he *did* cause those events (if you
believe he exists and influences the universe in any way, of course).
Do you think that that man's killing of the dog was [DK]"ultimately
determined exactly but non-measurably by the precise configuration of
the Universe at the Big Bang, or a vast number of fundamentally random
(or non-computable) quantum events"?
Depends on your level of description. There are sufficient discernable
patterns in matter forming the man and his dog, with discernable influences
on one another, that it's a convenient shorthand to say that he did.
If so then he has a remarkably boring job, since everything
we have so far measured appears to obey consistent rules (of course,
there
are always some seeming anomalies on the fringes of measurement,
which drive
refinements of theory).
What are some of these [DK]"consistent rules"?
Is the statement "life comes from pre-existing life" one of these
[DK]"consistent rules"?
No, that's more of a rule of thumb. 'Life' is a high-level phenomenon which
is not easy to measure or quantify. You need to read up on the philosophy of
vagueness: consider the statement 'a heap of sand with one grain removed is
still a heap'.
Otherwise, you could say the Universe is mechanical,
but allow for miracles, but then the 'first cause' argument doesn't
hold any
more.
Meaning of [DK]"mechanical" and [DK]"miracles"?
'mechanical': obeying a consistent set of underlying rules
'miracles': fundamental changes of behaviour with no underlying rule.
In a less abstract sense, 'mechanical' behaviour can be induced from prior
experience: 'tomorrow will be much like today', while 'miracles' are
exceptions to that rule. However, we have to be careful, because many
(most?) mechanical rules include moments of qualitative,
unpredictable/chaotic and sudden changes of behaviour, as in catastrophe
theory (we're back to heaps of sand again: keep dropping grains of sand and
your heap will grow consistently, until it reaches a critical angle at which
point it may experience a landslide). But these higher-level patterns and
behavioral changes can also be seen as consistent with the underlying rules,
in the same way that 'back and forth' and 'round and round' are both
consistent motions of a driven pendulum.
For many if not most events, including 'something beginning to exist'
(whatever that means), there is no 'cause' (or a vast number of
interacting
causes, depending on how you define 'cause').
What are two events for which you think there are no causes of those
events' occurrence?
I've given them. Although, as I say, my examples are more intended to
demonstrate that the whole concept of 'cause' is fundamentally flawed.
Danny
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