1

Joe, a good post.

I think that the key point is that worldviews inevitably contain first plausibles that shape everything else, but are themselves unproven and perhaps unprovable. (Not least, to try to prove everything leads to a self-referential absurdity, through the resulting multidimensional infinite regresses.]

But, it is plain that we can confidently trust and even know what we cannot demonstrate to any arbitrary level of demonstration -- science is a case in point!

SO, the unfderlying context for the theistic arguments is really that of comparative difficulties of alternative worldviews, in a context that asks: which alternative is the best explanation of X, and why . . . in a further context where the live options are on the table and compared relative to explanatory (1) scope, (2) coherence and (3) power [elegance vs ad hocness].

Then, one can see the balance on the major issues, and can see why one has taken one's position relative to the others. [Of course, on proiving GOd, the most persuasive evidence is having met him in your own life . . . as Pascal pointed out!]

Unfortunately, from the days of Plato's Republic on, it has been recognised that a full bore assessment requires a challenging intellectual level, so for many the short-cut solution is to resort to rhetorical games and selective hyper-skepticism targetting those views one rejects. [Many comments in this blog across time stand in strong evidence of this claim.]

Sad, but true.

Okay

GEM

2

"atheism is quite implausible"

How exactly is atheism implausable?

3

Jeff -- How exactly is atheism implausable?

Because it requires believing in "impossible things."

4

Why do you fail to take into account the possibility that a sporklepemboo destroyed God a long long time ago? Why isn't that "worldview" on the table?

5

Though I am a theist, I wish to take exception to one word in the following excerpt: "Oddly enough, while atheism is a minority view and has been so throughout the history of the world, it is assumed that pluralism requires that we adopt it as the default plausibility structure for almost all areas of human culture."

I believe you would be more accurate to say that pluralism requires that we adopt agnosticism as the default plausibility structure. After I left my childish faith for atheism (from which I thank God that I returned) it became apparent to me that it is relatively difficult to prove a negative. Thus the atheist usually devolves into agnosticism. Indeed, the ideal of science (that is never met) is complete indifference to everything beyond the question at hand and where the empirical data leads. Thus, positing an atheistic frame brings along more baggage than positing an agnostic frame.

While I'm nattering on, I think the picture is more complicated than mere plausibility structures. Some people are simply incapable of thinking rationally about some questions. The victim of abuse at the hands of some religion user will carry emotional baggage that'll cloud his/her judgement when religious questions arise.

And then there's this business of the Fall, Original Sin, and/or Total Depravity. Luther said that the will was in Bondage to sin and was thus incapable of giving a fair hearing to the gospel proclamation. Calvin elaborated this by distinguishing between the Universal call and the Effectual call of the gospel. The apologist is well advised to remember that any victory belongs to the Lord. (Recall that Elijah plus grace equals glorious victory at Mt. Carmel and Elijah minus grace equals cowering in a cave on Mr. Horeb.)

This business of "proving" or "disproving" the existence of God belies an old-fashioned modernist mindset because it ignores the subject to whom the proof is addressed. I can readily summon several arguments that suffice to prove God's existence to my satisfaction. And I know just as certainly that I can find any number of people who will not find those arguments compelling.

6

Oddly enough, while atheism is a minority view and has been so throughout the history of the world, it is assumed that pluralism requires that we adopt it as the default plausibility structure for almost all areas of human culture. Everything from science and education to politics and public policy is assumed to begin with the assumption that either God does not exist or that his existence is irrelevant. This idea that soft atheism is the neutral ground from which all sectarian matters must be addressed is patently absurd. Not only does this claim fail to recognize that atheism is not religiously neutral, it fails to acknowledge that atheism is quite implausible.

It is this implausibility that needs to be continuously pointed out and brought into the open. Theological arguments aid in this effort by pointing out that belief in the existence of God is more probable, more plausible, more reasonable, and more rational than its denial. While we should be respectful of individuals who adhere to skepticism or atheism, when these beliefs are brought to the public square their mystical and improbably assumption should receive the utmost scrutiny.

I don't particularly care for the term "soft atheism," - personally I prefer the term "nontheist," especially since folks like me don't go around denying a deity exists or not, and try not to speculate too much about it as there are more important things to do.

Of course, - like any good theist- I don't have a problem with mysticism either.

But I do think that saying "more probable" is actually quite wrong, and I am grateful to you for trying to pick out some arguments that are easily responded to; the best you'll get though will always be a question, and I've never understood why people are unsettled with the presence of a question.

7

Question for StevePoling: do you believe in the existence of sporklepemboo?

8

Steve - "agnosticism" is the "soft atheism" Joe mentioned in his post, and mumon criticizes later.

Which directly answers your assertion.

Strong being "denial of the possibility of God's existence" - ie: Larry Lord.

9

"Skeptics can always find reasons, however implausible they might be, for refusing to concede that God exists."

Good point, Joe. One thing that gets lost in this subject is that there are different Greek words behind the one English word "mind". One denotes the intellect, but another denotes the will, which also plays a role. We see an echo of this in English when someone says, "I have a mind to do ________."

In the sovereignty of God there is always an intellectual out for the person inclined to disbelieve, even if someone tries to invoke the sophistry of "time and chance" to conceal a desire to believe the implausible alternative.

10

Incidentally, Joe...

"Sweet, apologetics!"

That was my reaction on seeing the title of these two posts. I still think that :D

Larry - This link should provide you with as many willing responses to your question as you could like.

Care to discuss further?

11

Larry

Jus a pass tru . . . note you are back in action, though I still await your response on your ad hominems on Sternberg.

But on point:

I suspect Joe is doing a series on the different arguments/explanations of the cosmos. One of those I am sure you are aware, works bazck from the fact that the objects we observe in the comsos are contingent beings, and evidently the cosmos as a whole had a beginning therefore. But there is a subtly different form of the argument, which is timeless:

Contingent beings require necessary beings as their cause, and a necessary being is . . . INDESTRUCTIBLE. Now, you can claim to reject the principle of sufficient reason as a basis for rejecting this argument, but then we are not trying to give proofs bt best explanations: and which is more plausible: things have a good reason to be as they are, or things have NO REASON to be as they are . . . i.e. the cosmos is fundamentally unintelligible?

That is, I am adverting to the point that we are looking at competing explanations, and the related point that there is a cluster of arguments that converge on the basic theistic position as the best explanation of hte cosmos as we see it, some philosophical, some scientific, some moral, some relational, etc.

Non-theistic -- i.e. A [= not] + Theistic [= God], going back to the underlying greek [in short, you have simply half-translated "atheist" into English . . . i.e. implicit atheism is still atheism] -- attempted explanations need to account for the facts, coherently and elegantly.

One problem with nsturalistic metaphysics, as discussed previously by Joe, Plantinga, Lewis and many others, is that it is incoherent and that it repeatedly reduces to self-referential absurdity over the past 150 years. THis is an empirically established fact, going back to Fuerbach, MArx, Freud, Ayer et al, Skinner, Crick and even Tom CLark. ANd there is an underlying reason for it!

ANother problem with the explicit form of atheism is that the would be atheist very probably lacks the knowledge base to declare it semonstrated that there is no GOd, i.e. he is trying to prove a universal negative, and givent he fact of live options that are more coherent such as theism [cf Plantinga on the Free WIll Defense! Mackie etc had to accept that the defense works, though of course it is implausible relative to natrualistic views -- but it does not depend on plausibility but on logical possibility], the notion that it can presume tiself the default is laughable.

IN short, the point is, comparative difficulties and logic- and fact- constrained dialogue are a lot better than playing games with rhetoric.

GEM

12

"Skeptics can always find reasons, however implausible they might be, for refusing to concede that God exists."

Ha, very twisted way of putting it. I kinda like the converse which makes as much sense, "Christians can always find reasons, however implausible they might be, for thinking 'their' interpretation of God exists".

I think what makes atheism, agnosticism, materialism, whatever the name du jour is, the default position is that there's some objectivity to it, that people can agree on some of the aspects of the material world, through the scientific method, reason, and empiricism. I think most people agree that trees exist. If you throw the doors open to 'faith' and the possibility that Yahweh exists, then why haven't you, using the same 'logic', opened the doors to the existence of Zeus, Odin, sporklepemboo, Quetzlcoatl, etc? The majority of people on earth are not Christians; have we all fully examined their beliefs and concluded they are incorrect because there is some flaw in what they believe? What is the flaw in all these other religions, other than, 'I have faith' and 'the bible tells me so'? Plenty of holy books out there...

I don't think there are any 'rational' answers to those questions, and I understand why and how people believe what they believe. I wish a little more humility was shown though before comments like 'refusing to concede that God exists' were thrown up, as if it's obvious. Billions of people do not believe what you do, millions of Christians probably don't believe what you do, other 'pagan' gods are disregarded, centuries of philosophy and theology spent addressing these very questions about God's existence; I guess I find that statement rather immodest and ridiculous. I don't come to this site too often, so maybe your audience here is evangelicals. You can have 'faith' in anything; it doesn't make it any more (or less in all fairness) true.

Interesting discussion though!

13

Whoops, I just noticed this is an evangelical website; followed the link from In the Agora and thought I was commenting there.

14

"Strong being "denial of the possibility of God's existence" - ie: Larry Lord."

I never denied the possibility of God's existence. I merely pointed out the incontrovertible fact that the evidence for your deity is no better than the evidence that sporklepemboos exist.

Surely you aren't denying the possibility that sporklempemboos exist.

Fyi, Gordon: Sternberg is a creationist sympathizer. That is a conclusion based on evidence and I presented you with the evidence supporting that conclusion. So no ad hominem there. If a scientist wishes to be taken seriously, he should avoid playing patty-cake with creationists because creationists have a well-documented political agenda designed to promote their religious beliefs at the expense of science education in public schools. That is my opinion and I've previously presented you with the evidence for that opinion. No ad hominem.

So put a sock in it, Gordon, 'kay?

Thanks.

15

I don't come to this site too often, so maybe your audience here is evangelicals.

[...]

Whoops, I just noticed this is an evangelical website; followed the link from In the Agora and thought I was commenting there.

Dave, your comments made me laugh -- but as a matter of fact, Joe Carter, the owner of the blog, likes to reach out to people of all and no faiths. He also encourages people with dissenting views to post their comments. He seems to have a pretty thick skin about that, and a good sense of humor.

I don't think there are any 'rational' answers to those questions, and I understand why and how people believe what they believe. I wish a little more humility was shown though before comments like 'refusing to concede that God exists' were thrown up, as if it's obvious. Billions of people do not believe what you do, millions of Christians probably don't believe what you do, other 'pagan' gods are disregarded, centuries of philosophy and theology spent addressing these very questions about God's existence; I guess I find that statement rather immodest and ridiculous.

I understand with what you are saying, and I agree with most of it. But even though these are tough questions that might not have any "rational" answers, I think that reason and rationality have already explained a lot and are poised to explain a lot more in the future.

And when push comes to shove, every question has a rational answer: "The answer is such-and-such" or "I don't know the answer."

One last point: I have a bad habit of listening to people with whom I am totally 180 degrees in disagreement. I almost always end up learning something substantive by doing so, and I always end up learning something about the person with whom I disagree. I believe every person's perspective has something worthwhile to recommend it, even if it's hard to see up front what that something worthwhile could be.

16

Thanks Matthew, yea, kinda a dumb mistake wondering if this site has anything to do with evangelicals when it's right in the site name; the curse of hyper-links I guess.

"One last point: I have a bad habit of listening to people with whom I am totally 180 degrees in disagreement."

I don't consider that a bad habit at all, and I try to do the same. After reading Joe's entry, and I admit there are several things that I am in near-total disagreement with and I think are, well, unsubstantiated let's say, it was interesting for me to reflect on that he is coming from an entirely different mindset and sees the world much differently than I. Most importantly to me at least, whether I agree with his conclusions or not, he seems to have thought through the arguments and is good at explaining them.

As a non-Christian, I think I make the mistake of perhaps stereotyping what I think Christians believe, when in fact there is a very wide variety of beliefs in his name. I try to keep that in mind and not to presume much when posting anywhere, since I also feel that blog posting, messaging, and even emails leave a lot of room for misinterpretation. Of course I hope that the converse is true, and that Christians realize that atheists aren't all hedonistic, selfish, and immoral (well at least no more so than anyone else, including Christians).

"I think that reason and rationality have already explained a lot and are poised to explain a lot more in the future"

Just a question for fodder: do you think the progression of reason and rationality to date has supported or ran counter to the belief that god exists? My quick response that it has ran counter to it, but I think that's because I look quickly at things like eclipses and people believing that demons instead of microorganisms are the cause of disease for instance. But I guess you could just as easily say that maybe the march of science has actually cleaned the lens by which religious people view the world, so that they can further understand his nature.

17

Just a question for fodder: do you think the progression of reason and rationality to date has supported or ran counter to the belief that god exists?

As you have probably read now from my comments in the next comment thread, my personal belief is very strong that there is no God.

But I also believe that in order to arrive at the truth, there needs to be a very lively marketplace of ideas competing with each other. We need ideas that tug at the common sense assumptions we like to make about the world.

The fact that there are hundreds of millions of nominally religious people in America, and billions more in the world, speaks very strongly about the way the world is and the way people are. Any rational investigation of life and reality has to respect, listen, and learn from religious beliefs and habits of mind.

For example, God often serves as a metaphor for various things, such as Love, or life itself. Just because I reject the notion of a God-created or God-directed universe, doesn't mean I reject others aspects of belief in God, or that I don't respect the good things in religious traditions.

And above all, it doesn't mean that I think theists are stupid or ignorant. It just means I don't see eye-to-eye with them on some things, and perhaps it is I who is mistaken.

That said, it would probably take a personal visit from God himself to convince me that he existed, and even then I'd be very skeptical (was I hallucinating/dreaming, was it an elaborate hoax, etc.).

18

Mr Lord

FYI, in earlier threads, you accused Mr Sternberg of specific scientific malpractice, and when pressed, in fact had no evidence: we are entitled to conclude that you did not know that the Miller article was peer reviewed and passed with minor adjustements by four persons holding five relevant PhDs -- but were very willing to accuse him of scientific malpractice on this score in publishing the paper by Miller.

Sadly, that goes to your credibility, and not to your credit.

You now continue to use the ad hominem by using a demonising -- and in this case significantly misleading -- label. (So far as I could see, Mr Sternberg wished to entertain serious dialogue, rather than censorship on live options and materially relevant concerns. You evidently have no such qualms. By highlighting this unresolved issue, I am calling you to turn back from this path, to responsible dialogue.)

The first rule of holes is: if you want to get out, stop digging in deeper.

+++++++++

Moreover:

On the material point:

--> When there are live options there are live options: i.e. none is entitled to the arrogant PC Dawkinian assertion that it "must" be the default -- on pain of dismissing those who dare differ as "ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked." (And in the case of naturalistic atheism, as noted above, it has a strong track record of persistent logical incoherence over the past 150 years from Fuerbach to Tom Clark, so if anything, the presumption should be that it has ruled itself out of the set of live options!)

--> Kindly pause, and think through the implications of a cosmos subject to thermodynamic energy degradation, that arguably has a definite beginning, and comprises contingent beings.

--> Namely:

(a) if it is to be intelligible, such a cosmos exists in the context of a necessary being capable of so originating it perhaps some 13.7 +/- 0.2 BYA.

(b) SUch a necessary being is most plausibly personal [as impersonal entities that are sufficient causes therefore immediately trigger the effect. For instance, where there are heat, fuel and oxidiser, there is a fire]. If it is objected that the eternal universe as whole has randum eruptions of micro-comi thent he problem is that in infinite duration every point in the space-time sheet should birth a microcosm; which is contrary to the Hubble observation of a coherently expanding observed cosmos -- i.e. we see a consitent red shift, not indiscriminate red and blue shifts. IN short, neither necessity nor chance works as alternatives . . . leaving agency on the table as the remaining live option, as at:

(c) The further fact of the observed knife-edge finetuning of the cosmos required to support life such as we enjoy implies a considerable degree of intelligence and concern even caring to the point of inferring a character that is loving.

--> That goes a looong way towards making plausible as a best reasonable explanation, theism as we know it!

--> Furthermore, necessary beings, by direct implication, are not subject to destruction by sporklepemboos or humans for that matter: their basis for existence is within their own nature, i.e. they cannot not-exist.

--> Until the Steady State cosmology collapsed, it was fashinable to assert that the universe is that necessary being, trotting out the informal fallacy of composition argument to dismiss the objection that the components of the universe are contingent so most plausibly the cosmos as a whole is contingent as well; especially given the implications of thermodynamics for heat death.

--> Now that option is off the table, unless you are willing to shift from observationally controlled science to speculative metaphysics, e.g. infinite arrays of micro-universes comprising the universe as a whole. But then, that is to drop the lab coat of science and expose the underlying metaphysical wolf! And on comparative difficulties of alternative worldviews, naturalism is an early non-starter, given its logical incoherence.

--> SO, it seems that the issue is comparative difficulties across live options: factual adequacy, logical coherence, explanatory power. On that score, theism is a much more viable candidate for a "best current explanation" than atheistic naturalism.

Okay

$0.02

GEM

19

"That goes a looong way towards making plausible as a best reasonable explanation, theism as we know it!"

And that seems like a very looong stretch. I looked through the comments and didn't find any reference to the "persistent logical incoherence"
of atheistic naturalism; would you like to provide an example? I think naturalism is the default position only because it covers or explains aspects of the world that people can agree on. It appears that microorganisms cause some diseases, not demons. It can also be demonstrated, although there will always be those who are not convinced. Also, saying that sporklepemboo, or Zeus or whoever cannot destroy necessary beings isn't really saying much. There is no reason to think that this necessary being is not Zeus, or that it is a being at all; it could just be a thing. There is also no reason then not to ask as to where this 'necessary being' came from itself, ad infinitum.

Fine-tuning as an argument I always thought had a flaw in that it seems to say that it's amazing that the world/universe is 'tuned' so we can live in it, as if we came from somewhere else. It seems to just be an argument from incredulity. We are a part of the same world/universe, and we have no idea what other possible forms life could possibly take that may not even depend on oxygen, water, etc.

"...implies a considerable degree of intelligence and concern even caring to the point of inferring a character that is loving."

Uh, like the dinosaurs were cared for and loved? Pretty loose definition of 'caring' and 'loving'. How is the caring and loving demonstrated again to us? Just because we're here and alive?

20

Gordon,

I wanted to know more about the about the Richard Sternberg controversy, so I read this article on WorldNetDaily. I also read the controversial article by Stephen Meyer that Dr. Sternberg, as managing editor, had published in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, which is titled “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories”.

Dr. Meyer's article is very interesting. He surveys the current the state of affairs in evolutionary biology in regards to the origins of species. He focuses in particular on the problem of explaining the Cambrian explosion: how did up to forty radically new phyla (a phylum is a major category or grouping of organisms) appear relatively suddenly in the fossil records of about 530 million years ago.

Dr. Meyer documents a thorough case for skepticism towards what he labels as "neo-Darwinism", which is the traditional scientific view of new species generation through natural selection.

In addition, he posits that intelligent design theory (ID theory) is a reasonably good scientific explanation for the origin of species, and may in fact be the best current explanation. Intelligent design says that a rational agent is responsible for picking out or adding DNA material to genomes of organisms, with the result that new body plans and species are generated.

So the question that has arisen between you, Gordon, and Larry Lord, is whether or not Dr. Sternberg is guilty of "scientific malpractice" in publishing Dr. Meyer's article in a scientific journal.

Now my initial reaction on reading Dr. Meyer's article was, "Jeez Louise, how could Sternberg have published this c--p!?!"

But I have become sensitized to creationist/ID points of view through reading Joe's blog, so I was reluctant to jump to conclusions. I read some material pro- and con- that I was able to Google, including Dr. Sternberg's self-defense. I re-read Dr. Meyer's article carefully with as open a mind as I could muster. And I have formulated as nuanced a position as I believe the controversy deserves.

My opinion is that the article falls far short of the standards of a peer-reviewed scientific article.

Dr. Meyer does a good job of reviewing all the evolutionary theories except one: intelligent design theory. His critical eye probes the weaknesses of a whole battery of hypotheses and arguments, but when he finally gets to ID theory, his only comment is that intelligent design manages to avoid the pitfalls that he has exposed in all the other theories. He neglects to even mention the difficulties associated with ID, he doesn't offer any positive evidence whatsoever for a mechanism or an agent of ID, and he doesn't suggest how one might go about getting evidence for ID. He just makes assertions about some unspecified rational agent doing something unspecified.

I genuinely feel embarassed for Dr. Meyer and Dr. Sternberg. I wouldn't have submitted this article for a college class in evolutionary biology, never mind a peer-reviewed journal.

With a few important changes, such as treating ID theory not as a hypothesis but as an interesting question, the article could have been submitted as a kind of philosophy of biology essay to an appropriate venue. But as it stands, it is pretending to be something it is not: a scientific defense of a well-defined hypothesis.

Take a close look at the "Conclusion" section of Dr. Meyer's article:

Conclusion

An experience-based analysis of the causal powers of various explanatory hypotheses suggests purposive or intelligent design as a causally adequate--and perhaps the most causally adequate--explanation for the origin of the complex specified information required to build the Cambrian animals and the novel forms they represent. For this reason, recent scientific interest in the design hypothesis is unlikely to abate as biologists continue to wrestle with the problem of the origination of biological form and the higher taxa.

This would be a great conclusion if Dr. Meyer had actually discussed the pro's and con's of ID theory. To do this, he would have had to at a minimum do three things in the section of his paper that he devotes to intelligent design: give an explicit definition of various terms that he uses, such as "purposive design" and "rational agents"; give specific instances or examples of what those terms refer to; explain how those examples help to solve the problems he identifies with the other theories of evolution. Dr. Meyer doesn't do any of these basic things, much less get around to mentioning any of the objections to ID theory!

The whole thrust of the paper is not merely to document problems or weaknesses with the more traditional scientific theories of evolution. The thesis is, rather, as the conclusion states very clearly, to make the case specifically for intelligent design. So the fact that Dr. Meyer doesn't actually discuss what ID theory is supposed to say about evolution makes the whole paper a scandalously weak affair. It truly reflects poorly on Dr. Meyer and Dr. Sternberg, and I feel very sorry for the scorn they have received over this, precisely because it seems to be justified.

I am not a scientist, but I have strong interests in many scientific questions and I love to hear the latest news about scientific breakthroughs. The Meyer article is not without merit, for as I have said, it does a good job at identifying various problems in our current theories of evolution. But Dr. Meyer's highlighting of ID theory while refraining from explaining what ID acually is is such a junky piece of business that the paper never had a hope of being taken as serious scholarship.

I say all this with genuine regret, because evolution is a fascinating business, and I would very much like for ID-er's to make solid contributions to the debate.

21

For while they will not convince those whose passions rule their reason and prevent them from facing the truth, such arguments can be useful for shoring up a culture's plausibility structures.

Actually, Joe has put his finger on the real reason for apologetics -- to reassure believers that it is rational to believe in gods.

It is interesting to watch how "rationality" works. While there are thousands of cultures with religious beliefs, none of them stumbled on the Christian god through the use of rationality. But if you look at other aspects of culture, you can see how rationality produces the same outcomes over and over again in other aspects of human endeavor -- consider, for example, the multiple origins of largely identical technologies such as stone tools, agriculture, or weaponry -- and the independent discovery of identical geometrical and mathematical formulae across numerous cultures. How is it that cultures, using rationality, tend to solve technological problems with the same small set of approaches, but have widely varied views of religion? The answer is simple: when solving problems of science, math, or human governance, cultures are working in the real world. But in religion, cultures are living in unique fantasy realms, which require that one be enculturated to share. Nobody could rationally conclude that Jesus was implanted in Mary's womb by a particular Canaanite sky deity -- that is the kind of idea that one could only accept if one has been socialized to it by missionary work or, more usually, by indoctrination at a young age. Christians rightfully scorn such nonsense when they hear it in other cultures (was Athena born from Zeus? Was Ganesha reconstructed after an unfortunate misunderstanding?). Their own beliefs are no different. It is no wonder they require the constant shoring up of argument and exhortation, for rationality and sense threaten to slash them to pieces at any moment.

Infidel

22

Mullins you crack me up with all your "ad hominem" nonsense. That sort of garbage is the first resort of crank defenders such as yourself -- and Sternberg.

So drop it.

Goggins spent considerable time trying to re-educate you but we can rest assured that he failed.

Sternberg is an ignorant dweeb and Meyer is a charlatan. You, Gordon, are simply too stupid or too brainwashed to appreciate the basic facts about Meyer's piece of crap article which is best used as toilet paper or as a quintessential example of how to quote mine.

Again, all this is very very very old news.

I don't need to "demonize" Sternberg. His scientific reputation is tarnished because of his creationist-coddling behavior, and rightfully so. Not that many respectable scientists really gave a crap about Sternberg before his descent into infamy.

23

Goggins

"The Meyer article is not without merit, for as I have said, it does a good job at identifying various problems in our current theories of evolution."

A "good job" relative to what? Did Meyer identify a single new "problem" that isn't currently being scientifically explored by a REAL researcher (as opposed to a charlatan hack like Meyer)?

Compare Meyer's article with a recent review in a widely read journal which hasn't fallen asleep at the wheel and allowed a rube like Sternberg to stick creationist muck between its covers.

For example, try Santos et al., "Driving change: the evolution of alternative genetic codes" in Trends Genet. 2004 Feb;20(2):95-102.

24

Aha! Dr. Lord has escaped from the clutches of his mild-mannered keepers in time to give Mr. Mullings a tongue-lashing. Welcome back!

Goggins spent considerable time trying to re-educate you but we can rest assured that he failed.

I spent a moderate amount of time educating myself about a story that nudged my curiosity. I was happy to pass along the results of my efforts to anyone who might find them interesting. I don't think any one person here has displayed any particular need to be re-educated.

You, Gordon, are simply too stupid or too brainwashed to appreciate the basic facts about Meyer's piece of crap article which is best used as toilet paper ...

Let he who has yet to have his brain scrubbed be the one to cast the first stone, me Lord.

As for being stupid, Mr. Mullings merely offered his opinion that Dr. Sternberg was trying to promote a healthy dialogue, which is probably how Dr. Sternberg saw it himself. I don't agree 100% with Gordon, but it is certainly a reasonable position. More reasonable than spewing your low-grade vitriol, I would think.

But anyway, it's good to see you playing some fine fiddle again.

25

Gordon

"On that score, theism is a much more viable candidate for a "best current explanation" than atheistic naturalism."

This is self-serving unChristian garbage of the sort that typifies so many self-identified 21st century evangelicals.

We can summarize Gordon's "rational argument" in the following way: "No scientist can explain every observation ever made about the universe so a deity must be involved."

Gosh, that's real scientific Gordon.

Keep your two cents, bro'. Perhaps you can throw them into a fountain and wish for your deity to impart you with some actual knowledge rather than the meaningless claptrap you recite about "contingent beings" and "thermodynamic energy degradation."

If Jesus wasn't allegedly resurrected, he'd be rolling over in his grave listening to your horse hockey.

26

Goggins

"I don't agree 100% with Gordon, but it is certainly a reasonable position."

No, it's not a reasonable position. It's a possibility that is easily discounted.

You want a reasonable dialogue with scientists about evolutionary biology? Why, all you need to do is go to grad school, get a Ph.D., do some research, and present your data to those scientists. You'll get all the dialogue you want and probably a whole lot that you don't want.

Where is Meyer's research showing that incredibly powerful beings purposefully manipulated life on earth at one or more points during earth's history?

Let me help you out: that research doesn't exist. No one has any such data.

Hence: no reasonable scientific dialogue is possible about Meyer's inane and worthless "intelligent design theory."

Got it? Is this 100% clear? How can it not be?

If you want to have a religious discussion about how deities work and why they do the things that they do, then knock yourself out. Really. Enjoy it to your heart's content. Millions of people do so every day.

But don't take a crap on scientists because they don't have time to waste on your "metaphysical" religion-promoting treacle. That is what Meyer did and that is what Sternberg did. It's shameful.

27

Dr. Lord,

Aside from calling Dr. Sternberg a rube, I agree with everything in your 4:02pm comment.

"I don't agree 100% with Gordon, but it is certainly a reasonable position."
No, it's not a reasonable position. It's a possibility that is easily discounted.

It's a possiblity that's easily discounted only if you're willing to pretend you can read the minds and motivations of Dr. Sternberg and Dr. Meyer., and only if you have enough scientific training to digest the contents of Dr. Meyer's paper.

Anyway, "reasonable" for me does not mean "not able to be easily discounted." My definition of reasonable is any position a reasonably well-informed person could end up believing, even if I totally disagree with it. Even if I can easily discount it myself.

Let me help you out: that research doesn't exist. No one has any such data.

Well, if the Sternberg controversy is any indication, you may very well be right about that.

But don't take a crap on scientists because they don't have time to waste on your "metaphysical" religion-promoting treacle.

I've never done that. I've only said that scientists should be open to scientific research whether or not it comes from creationists/ID-er's. The Meyer paper didn't qualify as scientific research.

Thank you, Dr. Lord, for your ongoing concern and dialogue. Cheers!

28

H'mm

Interesting and all too revealing onward back-forth.

For Mr -- or is it Dr, as I see some using? -- Lord, I can only point out that enough has been said, long since, on tone and substance. His vitriol is its own refutation.

I repeat: on investigation, it turned out that the paper in question had been properly peer reviewed by four people holding five relevant PhDs. One may disagree with the substance of an argument in a paper, but that is a very different thing from asserting dishonesty on peer review -- which is what was unjustifiable and slanderously asserted in the earlier thread.

PC thought police tactics hinder the search for truth. In particular, slanderous ad hominems are fallacies precisely because they divert attention from the substance of the issue and foster a climate of rage, closed-mindedness and uncivility. That does not get us anywhere sensible.

In the case in view Mr Sternberg DISAGREED with Mr Miller but published him because he thought it worth discussing why there is a cambrian life explosion at the body plan level -- i.e. why the highest most radical diversity of life occurs so early with little or no sign of prior development from a common ancestor.

Surely, such a strongly supported counter-intuitive observation is relevant to assessing the relative strength of the NDT and its competitors, including ID?

[Or, do we wish to a priori rule out agency as a possible explanation for the most complex class of integrated and irreducibly complex systems we observe? And if we a priori decide that only chance and blind force are possible explanations on cause, then that begs some very big questions to the point of constituting the fallacy of the closed mind at the level of metaphysics. SO much so, that we are looking at redefining science as the best naturalistic explanation for everything from hydrogen to humans, which is an abandonment of truth as a relevant criterion in assessing scientific claims.]

On a more interesting level I see:

I looked through the comments and didn't find any reference to the "persistent logical incoherence" of atheistic naturalism; would you like to provide an example? I think naturalism is the default position only because it covers or explains aspects of the world that people can agree on.

The basic problem here is that the commenter evidently expects a summary of 150 years of the history of ideas in a comments thread [such summaries have been provided over the past 3 months BTW], and indeed, several examples were identified above by giving key names in the history of naturalistic thinking.

They can be looked up. Perhaps one might start with Marx's reductionism to class conditioning and its self-reference, or SKinner's challenge that he too should be regarded as a puzzled opersantly conditioned rat in the cosmic maze, or Crick's strange molecular reductionism that should lead him to put the disclaimer on his own books that all of what follows is mere neural network noise.

But maybe the most accessible and exhaustively examined case is the failure of Logical Positivism -- which is directly relevant to the latter part of the claim.

For, that failed system asserted that statements could be split into analytic and synthetic ones, the former being a matter of words about words, the latter having empirical reference. The verification/falsification principle was then asserted: if a syntrhetic claim was not empirically testable, it was vacuous, i.e. meaningless. SOunds great, and it sure led to a great deal of dismissal of metaphysical, ethical and theological claims as meaningless 50 - 70 years ago. But then somebody asked: is this claim itself merely words about words or is it empirically testable? It was self-referential and notr analytic, but was itself not empirically testable, so it was an absurdity. So, there are few logical positivists among current philosophical thinkers, but word has not got out to the boondocks as yet.

In short, Naturalism is a specific, and controversial, worldview claim: not at all a default position. Indeed, it has long since been pointed out that the very fact that naturalists implicitly acknowledge that our minds and consciences are important - for they argue and hold that those who reject their position are in error or worse -- thereby show just this point.

Further to that, there is an implicit reductionism to the material in naturalism, and this consistently undercuts the legitimacy of thought and argument itself. The logical positivists are but one example as can be looked up.

But all of this simply underscores the lack of exposure to worldview level issues and thinking in most current western education, not to mention the media culture. Beware, for metaphysics is at its most powerfully enslaving when it is implicit and unquestioned -- as is evidently the case with naturalism for the excerpt above. Surely, that is the main lesson of the parable of Plato's cave: http://www.bulldognews.net/cave-parable.html (and the story of the judicial murder of Socrates, which is just below its surface).

A quick read of this story will show just how little we have advanced at this level in the past 2,400 years.

Grace

Gordon

29

OOps

I seem to have a mental block: MEYER, not Miller.

GEM

30

H'mm

I think a basic intro to worldview thinking may be helpful to those sufficiently open to consider the implication of the following chain of reasoning:

1] Take a claim A, which is objected to: WHY should I accept it?

2] Generally that requires B, a further claim and/or data/observation plus associated reasoning. BUT why should i accept B?

3] Because of C, D , . . . Thus, ever since Socrates, Plato and Aristotle we have known we have threee options: (i) ultimate circularity, (ii) infinite regress, (iii) stopping at a set of first plausibles that are themselves not further proved.

4] Circularity does not work, as we assume what was to be proved. (COmparative difficulties resolves this!)

5] Infinite regress is futile as we can never START a proof.

6] So, we end up at F, our fait-point, the set of first plausibles we have. These define our worldviews, the set of core beliefs that shape how we view the world.

Metaphysics, the core discipline of philosophy, is about examining and assessing critically, worldviews. At this level, naturalism is as much a worldview as is theism, or pantheism, or henotheism or polytheism etc.

From the above we can also see that one cannot escape having a worldview, but if one is blind to one's view and the alternatives andstheir comparative difficulties, then one will be that much more prone to be blindly caught up in somebody's scheme.

And of course, this lays out the importance of Joe's post, which is on metaphysical issues.

FOr a look at an introduction to this level of thought, using materials I have prepared for training people over the years:

a] Reason and belief basic primer {start here]: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Mars_Hill_Web/Reason_and_belief.htm

b] Straight thinking: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Straight_Thinking.pps

c] on spin games: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/straight_or_spin.htm

d] Phil course intro: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Intro_phil/What_is_Phil.htm

e] Phil toolkit: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Intro_phil/toolkit.htm

f] On thinking about God: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Intro_phil/God.htm

Okay, hope that helps.

GEM

31

H'mm

Silence overnight. Interesting.

I had a look at Dembski's site recently, and came across an interesting discussion on the rhetoric of ID/NDT.

Excerpts from the web page http://www.designinference.com/documents/2004.04.Backlash.htm that may throw light on what has gone on above include:

DEMBSKI'S DEFN OF ID: intelligent design is not a religious doctrine about where everything came from but rather a scientific investigation into how patterns exhibited by finite arrangements of matter can signify intelligence.

DAWKINS' DEFN OF BIOLOGY: “biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose”

That sets a very interesting context for re-reading the above thread, especially given the following, on

RHETORIC: we need first to understand . . . the three traditional aspects of rhetoric: logos, ethos, and pathos.

Logos refers to the reasoned case that is being advanced. Think of it as the formal argument that can be written out on a sheet of paper. The identification of presuppositions, the marshalling of evidence, and the drawing of inferences all fall under logos. The evolutionist threatens to score here by making an argument that is not adequately answered by our side. Whether the argument is sound or fallacious, it does not matter. The important thing is that the argument is allowed to stand and that nonpartisan bystanders think the argument raises a substantive difficulty for intelligent design (note that evolutionists are just as intent on winning the undecided middle as we are). Next comes ethos. Ethos refers to the perceived character, integrity, and accomplishment of the rhetor. Ethos is what inspires confidence and establishes credibility in the eyes of the audience. Conversely, it is what destroys confidence and erodes credibility. And, finally, there is pathos. Pathos refers to the emotion or passion that the rhetor is able to elicit from the audience. The rhetor may be able to play on the audience’s heartstrings, thereby eliciting sympathy. Alternatively, the rhetor may inspire anger or fear in the audience. Pathos is especially important if the rhetor is attempting to get the audience to take action.

Evolutionists attack intelligent design by appealing to each of these three aspects of rhetoric. Accordingly, they attack intelligent design with respect to logos by claiming that science utterly fails to support it, whether on evidential or theoretical grounds. What’s more, they attack intelligent design with respect to ethos by charging its proponents with being morally and intellectually deficient. And, finally, they attack intelligent design with respect to pathos by instilling the fear that intelligent design means not just the end of science but also the end of rational discourse in a free and open society.

Of course, all of this goes back to Aristotle's The Rhetoric (and which is the introductory cite in my Phil Toolkit page):

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the [ethos] personal character of the speaker; the second [pathos] on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words [logos] of the speech itself. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible . . . Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile . . . Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question . . . .

I think that the first step to de-spinning the ID/NDT debate is to understand this pattern, in light of the implicit metaphysical commitment to evolutionary materialism that our civilisation's education system and media culture invite us to. Once we see that the real issue is about metaphysical commitments and related epistemology, then it becomes obvious that we need to bone up on these things if we are to begin to make progress towards the truth.

Grace to all

Gordon

32

All:

I thought a link to the earlier thread might also prove helpful: http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001314.html

There you will see just why I made the above notes on thought police tactics.

If you want to see why, over the past 20-odd years, I have thought that one does not need to be ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked to doubt the NDT, you may wish to look at some introductory level remarks at http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Mars_Hill_Web/evolutionism.htm

(FOllow up the links, kindly. They give a deeper level.)

Grace to all

Gordon