1

Profound, Joe.

2

Sigh.

First of all, and let's not forget it, due to the near-universal acceptance of evolution among reputable scientists (see the Steve project) it is nowhere near sufficient to assert the scientific existence of an "intelligent designer" merely by claiming -even assuming that claim is reasonable which it isn't as shown below - it is logically impossible for human brains (and the mentation that develops from them) to think logically without such design. One would need empirical evidence, which Joe doesn't have, for the simple reason that there is none, absolutely none, that has withstood peer review. The evidence for the evolution of human beings, and the human brain, from earlier animals, is simply overwhelming, especially in comparison to the sheer lack of evidence to support a creation sui generis.

Second of all, there are so many serious problems with this reasoning that, yet again, it begs the question why is this even being advanced. It cannot be the case that such specious reasoning is supposed to be taken seriously by anyone even remotely familiar with the actual issues.

"1) There is only one thing that might serve us as a source of information about truth - our own thought. "

I have no idea what this means. A single person's thought? Two? A million? This is freshman level philosophizing. It ignores the very simple fact that 2+2=4 everywhere and no matter who is around to think it, or not think it.

"2) If it can be shown that a thing arises entirely from non-rational sources, we can never have reason to accept that thing as a source of information."

I don't get it. This hinges on the words "entirely" and "non-rational." It is very easily refuted by saying the human brain is neither an entirely rational nor entirely "-non-rational" source yet nevertheless, two plus two equal four and we know it to be so. If what is meant is that the capacity to understand that 2 +2 =4 could not arise from non-rational sources, I don't see why not. To claim otherwise is to misunderstand, among other things, basic notions of information theory, the second law of thermodynamics, and other issues that have been discussed time and time again (see Pharyngula, or Forrest and Cross's book, Creationism's Trojan Horse) and which refute the reasoning of point 2 in far more detail than I remember or care to remember. Just look it up if you doubt me.

"3) It follows that if a belief system requires us to conclude that our thought arises entirely from non-rational sources, that belief system rules out the possibility of our having any information about truth."

But it doesn't follow. The origin of the brain in no way affects the truth that 2+2= 4. Nor does the fact that the brain is easily fooled by numerous illusions impact that truth. Nor does the fact that most human brains have tremendous difficulty understanding certain kinds of probabilities. In fact, the very existence of these difficulties of perception is one (tiny) part of the convergent empirical evidence that the human brain evolved, is evolving, and will continue to evolve.

"4) Materialism requires us to conclude that our thought arises entirely from non-rational sources."

It most certainly does not, mainly because words like "materialism" load the dice and give away the game that, as constructed, this is a straw man. The actual formulation, of which point 4 is a grotesque parody, is that evolution requires us to conclude that human thought developed from a particular kind of brain structure which has been evolving for millions of years, from related brain structures in earlier animals.

"5) Therefore materialism rules out the possibility of our having any information about truth."

Therefore, no it doesn't. Two plus two is four. And again, "materialism" is part of a straw man. It is the theory of evolution by natural selection which needs to be addressed, not some vague idea like "materialism."

And while we're all wasting time on this dorm-level philosophisizing, serious theology is being ignored. And so is serious science. And that is the problem.

In science classes, students don't have the time to waste. There are far too many important real facts to learn, accumulated and verified to many decimal points by these "non-rational," "materialistic" minds of ours.

And in religion, there are far too many interesting questions to ask - such as the meanings of Job, or the theology of floods - to waste time in a futile effort to deploy the Bible as a science texbook, which it clearly isn't and which it clearly was never intended to be.

3

Joe,

Another excellent post. Let's hope you generate some serious debate.

Tristero wrote:

"I have no idea what this means. A single person's thought? Two? A million? This is freshman level philosophizing. It ignores the very simple fact that 2+2=4 everywhere and no matter who is around to think it, or not think it."

Actually this would seemingly come from one of History's great philosophers, Descarte.

He began his reasoning by saying something along the lines of (And this is paraphrased from memory), "There is one thing we can be certain of, that we doubt. If I doubt it means I think, therefore I am." and he goes on from there to prove that he exists and can think and come to truths through thinking/thought.

Of course, Descarte probably didn't think he was thinking with a Monkey's mind.

Tristero, I hope that advances you out of Freshman philosophy and into grad school.

;)

4

Foster's conclusion, I think, depends upon whether we are talking about capitol T truth dealing with universals, or the more pedestrian idea of truth.

5

Joe, you've snubbed me. If this is your last post on the topic for a long while, please don't deny me the limited opportunity for a reply!

My post again:

Joe and co.

Your inquiry is in vain. If materialism is a possible reality, how does assuming it's not an actual reality make your reasoning faculty any more reliable?

Boonton touched on this, but it seems that one must be omniscient in order to be certain of something. Nothing is certain, and I could be wrong about that. The point is that it's well known that human thought at some point reduces to unfounded assumptions. Assuming this is not the case doesn't affect it's reality. If that's cause for you to get a lobotomy or something, then maybe thinking isn't for you anyway.

Finally, I'd venture that there weren't a lot of accurate thoughts before the acquisition of language and, later, writing. It has been through informal and, later, formal education—a passing down of ideas that seem to accurately describe reality and produce effects therein—that we have come to be as knowledgeable as we presently believe ourselves to be. In other words, it is culture that over time sifts through accurate and inaccurate ideas and in some cases (we might hope) amasses the accurate ones. (Again, though, nothing is certain and I could be wrong about that. I'd bet anything that that is the only semblance of absolute truth you'll ever come across.) When the acquisition of more than one accurate notion is deemed all the more absurd, culture's function of fashioning over time a body of ideas that probably began as utter nonsense into science is discounted—which isn't fair.

6

Imagine if you had a friend who wore bell bottom jumpsuits, macramé shoes (made of hemp), and a crocheted beer can hat because they thought it made them look "groovy." Even if you approached the task with the best of intentions it would be almost impossible not to take perverse pleasure pointing out that their style was hopelessly out of fashion. That is how I feel about writing, once again, on the topic of materialism and belief. As much as I want to believe that my intentions are noble, I can't help but be amused by the shocked reactions when I point out to my materialist cohorts that one of their core beliefs is self-defeating.*

Evolutionism is the tinfoil hat atheists wear to keep God out of their brain waves.

7

"2) If it can be shown that a thing arises entirely from non-rational sources, we can never have reason to accept that thing as a source of information."

This I will not accept as a blanket statement; it requires proof. The example given your previous thread is a poor one, since it deals with a single stone eroded over time. Rather a poor analogy to descent with modification, don't you think?

"Still, I promise that this will be the last post on this topic for a long, long time."

Can I get an "amen"?

"If they ain’t got it by now, then they just ain’t gonna get it."

I long ago suspected the same of you, but I like you too much to give up just yet. ;-)

8

Thought I'd weigh in on the subject at hand... but...

Imagine if you had a friend who wore bell bottom jumpsuits, macramé shoes (made of hemp), and a crocheted beer can hat because they thought it made them look "groovy." Even if you approached the task with the best of intentions it would be almost impossible not to take perverse pleasure pointing out that their style was hopelessly out of fashion.

You typically find it perversely pleasing to point out your friends' fashion faux pas?

How do your friends feel about that, I wonder...

why should we "trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind"?

Why not?

1) There is only one thing that might serve us as a source of information about truth - our own thought.

There is only one way that we can be informed- for information to be made manifest in our conciousness.

2) If it can be shown that a thing arises entirely from non-rational sources, we can never have reason to accept that thing as a source of information.

I have no idea what this statement means. Within mathematics, there are many ways to demonstrate that rational numbers can be derived from sequences of irrationals, for example.

You cannot, actually, provide a rational explanation for your experience that is your experience. This seems pretty obvious to me.

And then everything else after that, predicated on this statement, is not meaningful to me either.

Even if we assume that it is possible for nature to create something as inexplicably complex as human consciousness, we cannot assume that consciousness would be reliable.

Concioussness is not always reliable. Ask any clinical psychiatrist.

On the other hand, we have nothing else with which to go on; actually, for the reason stated above.

outcome of blind, accidental causes and a reliable belief-forming apparatus by which we discern truths about the world.

Again who is saying "blind, accidental causes"?

But let's get to what I suspect is the meat of the matter:

1. Humans are conscious.
2. We evidently got that from animals.
3. Yes, animals are concious, albeith with brains that do not have the semantic capabilities we do.
4. And your point is?

Since we regularly engage in reasoning that produces true beliefs, the materialists' contend, we have reason to trust our noetic equipment.

Since we who have legs regularly walk, and we do so without philosophizing about it, why would we have reason not to trust our ability to be ambulatory?

We got that from our evolutionary forebearers as well, so why the big fuss over semantic/linguistic capabilities?

As Douglas Adams wrote:

...Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.

9

Eric & Lisa,

Descartes has nothing to do with this kind of reasoning (and famious he may be, but the flaw in his dualism has often been pointed out and dooms his philosophical separation of mind and body). The issue here is whether entirely reliable truths can be apprehended by a mind that is less than entirely reliable. And the answer is, of course they can. Two plus two equals four everywhere and for all time, whether or not Descartes exists, thinks, eats, prays, or sneezes. Regardless of whether Joe Carter's mind can be tricked by an optical illusion or a quirk of probability.

Indeed, the simple fact that the mind is fallible, prone to predispositions and errors of perception in certain cases, is a tiny part of the mass of converging evidence in support of the evolution of humans from earlier species.

If that was the only evidence of such evolution, then there may be a case for revisiting these hoary dormitory arguments in detail. But it isn't. The theory origin of species by natural selection is a widely documented, and central, proposition of modern biology.

Is it a complete description? Of course not. Little in science is. Will it ever be complete? No. Is it completely right? In essence, it appears to be, but details will surely change.

Is it possible that "intelligent design" will ever rise to the level of scientific theory? No. There is no science in it, just an expression of futility - "we have no idea how this happened, therefore God, sorry...I meant an intelligent designer created it."

The argument behind "intelligent design" is also theologically bogus. It is an argument that advocates a "God of the Gaps," which essentially says, "What science cannot explain, there treadeth the Almighty." The problem should be obvious. Today, science may not yet be able to account for dark matter and dark energy, for example, or give a fully detailed account of the K-T extinction, but as knowledge accumulates, God's footsteps become more and more constrained. Eventually, God becomes the hapless entity who accounts for the unexplained wiggling of bacteria and nothing else, which is hardly a meaningful description of what most of us mean by God.

The God of the Gaps problem is easily solved simply by recognizing an obvious truth: the Bible is not a science textbook and was never intended to be one. To read Genesis as a physically, scientifically true description of the origin of the universe and of human beings is, to be kind, a complete misreading of the texts (there is more than one description of origins in Genesis).

Since this argument is so obviously trumped up, it begs the question of what "intelligent design" advocates are actually advocating. It is not science, surely, but religion. But not only any old religion, a very particular set of religious beliefs held by only a handful of people, beliefs that are tied to a bleak, indeed bizarre, moralism that goes far beyond the oft-stated goal of preventing same sex marriage. A moralism that seeks, as Santorum and others have admitted, to eliminate behavior between consenting married couples that most of us consider not only normal but thoroughly enjoyable. In fact, the religion advocated by the "intelligent design" crowd is so theologically vapid and one-dimensional, it really is less a religious doctrine than it is a political agenda.

Viewed in this light, as a political program, the behavior of the "intelligent design" folks becomes explicable. They've never bothered to spend time actually doing science, but they've spent tens of thousands of hours lobbying senators, congressmen, and school boards. They've spent an enormous fortune on public relations campaigns and misinformation. They've fine-tuned their message so that it takes a bit of an effort not only to discover what they really mean but also the full extent of their extremism.

What a waste of time and effort. And during a period when decent American science education is desperately needed.

10

Tristero,

Is it possible that "intelligent design" will ever rise to the level of scientific theory? No.

Let's add this to the long list of "impossibles" in the history of science -- from heliocentrism to quantum mechanics. The history of science is the story of dominant paradigms being overthrown. If you think the current reigning paradigm will last forever, you're naive.

It is an argument that advocates a "God of the Gaps," which essentially says, "What science cannot explain, there treadeth the Almighty."

No, that's a pathetic charicature of ID. ID says we can employ the tools of reason to evaluate evidence of design in natural history. We do this in many other branches of the sciences -- archeology for example (is this odd shaped rock a product of human design -- a tool -- or is it just an odd shaped rock?).

the Bible is not a science textbook and was never intended to be one. To read Genesis as a physically, scientifically true description of the origin of the universe and of human beings is, to be kind, a complete misreading of the texts (there is more than one description of origins in Genesis).

I agree with you here, and I know many other ID proponents do as well. But that's beside the point. ID doesn't depend or derive from a literalist reading of Genesis. It simply asserts this: we use various analytical tools to determine the presence of human design in archeology, forensics, history, and other disciplines. If we don't a priori forclose the possibility of a designer, why can't we employ similar tools to examine the presence of design in natural history?

It is not science, surely, but religion. But not only any old religion, a very particular set of religious beliefs held by only a handful of people, beliefs that are tied to a bleak, indeed bizarre, moralism that goes far beyond the oft-stated goal of preventing same sex marriage. A moralism that seeks, as Santorum and others have admitted, to eliminate behavior between consenting married couples that most of us consider not only normal but thoroughly enjoyable. In fact, the religion advocated by the "intelligent design" crowd is so theologically vapid and one-dimensional, it really is less a religious doctrine than it is a political agenda.

Yes, Tristero, you've solved the puzzle! You've uncloaked the great right wing conspiracy! All we really care about is what you're doing in your bedroom. We're so spiteful and repressed that we want nothing more than to know who you're diddling and then, after taking a quick peek, to make you stop. It all ties together, see -- intelligent design, the big oil companies, the Patriot Act -- all a grand scheme to control your glands! Talk about "dormitory arguments." Go back to your sophomore year where you belong.

All that said....

Joe,

I love ya buddy, but this one is losing me. The logic just doesn't seem tight to me at all. No one, materialist, Christian, or otherwise, claims that our noetic equipment is entirely, or even often, reliable. Our noetic equipment is generally good enough to give us some information about reality from which we can form reasonable conclusions, but it's prone to give us mis-information as well. This is why we don't say "perception is reality." Perception must be repeatedly tested because perception often is wrong.

And, if we incorporate a richer Christian worldview that includes the reality of spiritual agencies -- including not just God, but the "principalities and powers" mentioned in scripture -- we'd have to admit that our noetic equipment gives us only a tiny slice of perception concerning reality. Lump the corrupting effets of sin and the fall on top of that within the Christian worldview, and we'd have to say that a healthy skepticism of our "natural" noetic equipment is required.

In other words, your logic seems to assume that perception must be inherently highly accurate in order for us to get by in the world or to make any truth claims. The fact is, though, that our perception often is not highly accurate. This could mean that our noetic equipment evolved haphazrdly on an "as needed" basis, or it could mean that our noetic equipment was designed with inherent limitations and further corrupted by sin. Either way, it seems to me, the nature of our noetic equipment provides no apparent support for either the materialst or design positions.

11

Joe,

You make the following claim: if our noetic equipment (that is to say, our brains and nervous system) is the result of a non-rational process (such as non-rational evolution), then our noetic equipment may be faulty.

But it seems to me that you are assuming that your noetic equipment is reliable enough to justify that belief.

How do you justify such a belief in the reliability of your noetic equipment?

If your answer is that our noetic equipment is the result of Intelligent Design (or evolution guided by rational means), then how do you know that fact in turn is true without assuming once again that your noetic equipment if reliable enough to produce justifiably true belief?

You are trapped by the paradox of enlisting a brain, whose reliability is in question, to analyze the reliability of its own workings.

You are making the same "leap of faith" that you ascribe to the materialists.

“With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has always been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” -- Charles Darwin

I would trust some of the "convictions of a monkey's mind" -- such as his knowledge of where a really good banana tree can be found in his jungle -- but not others. Likewise, I would trust some of the convictions of man's mind as well.

In a comment to the previous discussion, Greg Forster provided a useful summary of the argument:

1) There is only one thing that might serve us as a source of information about truth - our own thought.

You could say that thought is the only source of truth. And strictly speaking, you would be correct to say so.

But it sure is an odd way of putting it. The source of most of our thought is our experience (as mediated by our senses, of course), which is something external to and independent of our thoughts and our brains.

2) If it can be shown that a thing arises entirely from non-rational sources, we can never have reason to accept that thing as a source of information.

This is where it all falls apart, Joe.

In the Kimon’s Stone: Materialism and the Reliability of Beliefs comment thread, I pointed out the following:

It is true that if something, such as "noetic equipment" (that means the stuff we use to think and to know things, such as our brains and our sense organs), is produced by non-rational processes, we have no a priori reason to think that it is rational, reliable, or anything else for that matter. The reason we do think it performs reliably, or in a reliably rational manner, is because that is what our noetic equipment is observed to do.

For example, we might not have any a priori reason to think that anything produced by non-rational processes should be bubbles. But if we see bubbles in the real world that are produced by non-rational processes, then we can conclude that non-rationally produced bubbles are indeed possible.

So if we see brains that appear to be produced by non-rational processes, such as evolution, we can therefore conclude that rational things or beings are indeed produced by non-rational processes. There is no reason to think otherwise.

In other words, we might not normally expect that (non-rational) evolution would produce a rational entity, such as a rational brain. We might not have any a priori reason to sit around waiting for evolution to produce a rational brain.

But if we do observe a rational brain that is the product of a non-rational process of evolution, then not only do we conclude that the non-rational can produce the rational -- we are actually forced to conclude that such is the case.

Back to Greg Forster's summary:

3) It follows that if a belief system requires us to conclude that our thought arises entirely from non-rational sources, that belief system rules out the possibility of our having any information about truth.

Well, it would follow, if step 2 were true.

4) Materialism requires us to conclude that our thought arises entirely from non-rational sources.

You could say that our thought arises from non-rational sources, if by "non-rational sources" you mean "a brain that was created by (non-rational) evolution".

But once again, this is kind of an odd way of putting things. Our brains are not fully rational, by any means. But they are at the least partly rational, or rational enough to be having this discussion.

To describe our brains as "non-rational sources" because they are the result of a non-rational process of evolution is confusing at best, and downright misleading at worst. "Non-rational sources" makes it sound like our brains themselves are not rational, and that is plainly false.

But, with that caveat, I will grant you that "our thought arises entirely from non-rational sources" is strictly true, by the definitions you are choosing to use.

5) Therefore materialism rules out the possibility of our having any information about truth.

This conclusion is based on step 2 and step 3, which say that non-rational sources, such as (non-rational) evolution, can never produce a source of reliable information, such as a rational brain.

Since steps 2 and 3 are themselves false, the conclusion fails to follow.

The only thing I would add to this debunking of the five-step argument is the following point: Notice how you, Joe, seem to make a fetish of the brain as a source of truth, a source of justifiable belief.

I would emphasize that a brain, by itself, can produce little, indeed nothing of value.

A brain is not so much a source of truth, as much as it is a processing center of information that we receive from the outside world. Information that we receive from our experience, from our sensory input.

A brain cut off from sensory input, from interaction with the outside world, would quickly degenerate into an unreliable mess. To de-emphasize this aspect of our brains and our minds is to miss a fundamental aspect of our reality and life experiences.

How are people who are otherwise committed to logical reasoning able to fall for such an obvious fallacy?

Joe, I cannot really explain to you how much you are genuinely annoying me with this gratuitous insult.

I spent a lot of time yesterday analyzing your post about Kimon's Stone. Not because I felt a particular need for enlightenment, but primarily for your benefit because you expressed what seemed to be a genuine desire to understand the materialist position.

In the middle of a comment thread where I was trying with great effort to discern what you were trying to say, you drop the conversation to come over here and post insults. I know it's meant to be funny in a snarky kind of way, but I'd appreciate it if you answered my outstanding open questions about your last post before jumping up on the god-damned high horse again. The shtick is wearing a little thin.

It actually takes time and effort to pull apart what you say and figure out what you mean. I think the least you could do is acknowledge that.

I'm still rankled by the little do-si-do that you pulled off yesterday: In one comment, you conceded that the brain could have come about through evolution (a non-rational process). Then in the next comment, you "clarified" that you meant Intelligent Design instead of purely non-rational evolution. Between those two comments I wasted a solid half-hour of my life trying to figure out how the heck you were reconciling non-rational evolution with everything else you were claiming.

Give me a break!

Because they have an a priori belief that materialism is true.

Joe, my materialism is not an a priori belief. It is based on what I observe over and over and over again, day in and day out: no supernatural forces, beings, or events.

If in the future I were to observe anything supernatural , I would be forced to revise my belief system and reject materialism.

Joe, you can refuse to believe me if you want, but you're just wrong about this.

Their commitment to that presupposition prevents them from seeing what that materialism is inherently self-defeating. They are like the logical positivists who claimed that metaphysical statements are meaningless and that a statement is meaningful if and only if it can be proved true or false by means of experience. The problem with this contention is that the claim itself is a metaphysical statement and, according to LP, would be meaningless. This seems ridiculously obvious to us now and begs the question of how anyone could have every believed it to be true. Yet as history repeatedly shows, otherwise reasonable people often cling to unreasonable ideas even when they are shown to be self-refuting.

The chutzpah it takes to compare materialists to logical positivists when you are the one insisting that materialism is meaningless is staggering.

This is an inversion of Orwellian proportions: materialists insist that Joe is wrong to say that materialists are wrong; therefore they are just like those positivists who said all metaphysical statements are wrong.

Joe, you are the one insisting that materialists have no rational basis for justified true belief. You are the one who is playing the role of the logical positivist.

Do you fully understand the meaning of your own words? Are you being mischievously disingenuous?

Or do you really believe you are defending rationality against those hordes of fallacious materialists?

As the paleontologist Stephen J. Gould once asked, "How can we escape this recursive paradox that our brains, as biological devices constrained by the history of their origin, must be enlisted to analyze history itself?" The answer is that we can't. Not because the paradox is insolvable but because it is not a paradox at all. The concept is nothing more than a self-defeating idea that is held with a tenacious religious fervor.

Well, materialism would be a self-defeating idea if your argument were valid. Do you actually have any valid arguments you would like to share with us?

While I realize it smacks of hubris, the problem is one of stubbornness and not of intellect, for I am well aware that the majority of my materialist commenters possess more raw brainpower than I am able to muster.

Maybe, Joe, you are right, when you say that we possess more raw brainpower than you. But I don't think you are right.

I could speculate as to why this conversation has degenerated to some extent into an annoying argument, but I am convinced it is not because you lack raw brainpower.

I think it might be because you instinctively dodge questions that challenge your beliefs too much. But I'm not sure of that either.

Maybe it's because you prize too much the ability to allegedly hold "irrationality" over the heads of the materialists like a club. You prize this rhetorical weapon so much that maybe you can't bear to let it go.

It's interesting to speculate on these questions, but I'd rather just have you answer my other questions about the brain's evolution and reliability.

Especially this one: How do you justify your belief in the reliability of your brain (your noetic equipment) without assuming the reliability of your brain in the first place?

If you can give a satisfactory answer to that one, you can throw all the snark you want in my direction and I won't say boo.

12

Joe Carter writes: "*While I realize it smacks of hubris, the problem is one of stubbornness and not of intellect, for I am well aware that the majority of my materialist commenters possess more raw brainpower than I am able to muster. In fact, that is what I find particularly amusing about the debate. If someone with my stunted intellect can apprehend the axiomatic nature of this argument then it must be an emotional attachment that causes them to take the requisite 'leap of faith' necessary to cling to the ledge of materialism. Still, I promise that this will be the last post on this topic for a long, long time. If they ain’t got it by now, then they just ain’t gonna get it."

Joe, what is frustrating is your continual evasion of salient points, which I and others have raised, to no response except the continuous restatement of the syllogism in various forms. You haven't defined "rational," and you haven't explained why we should expect any beliefs to meet 100% reliability. In other words, your central claim:

2) If it can be shown that a thing arises entirely from non-rational sources, we can never have reason to accept that thing as a source of information.

13

dopderbeck

"Let's add this to the long list of "impossibles" in the history of science -- from heliocentrism to quantum mechanics."

No, "intelligent design" belongs with perpetual motion, astrology, and UFO abductions. Nor is the history of science replete with overthrown paradigms, which happens rarely. The history of science is replete with empirical data collection. However, to date there has been no empircal data collected by any "intelligent design" advocate that has withstood peer review.

Put another way, so far, despite the enormous publicity, no "intelligent design" advocate has bothered to do any real science.

"ID says we can employ the tools of reason to evaluate evidence of design in natural history."

The point which elicited this comment was that "intelligent design" is bad theology as it is based on God of the Gaps reasoning. You don't address this except to say I've caricatured the theology of "intelligent design." I don't see the caricature. "Intelligent design" says quite clearly that what can't be explained empircially is evidence of God, excuse me, an "intelligent designer." This means that the more that does get explained will restrict the necessary involvement of God. That is God of the Gaps and it is an awful theology that bears no relationship to what most us mean when we talk about God.

Furthermore, you changed the subject, responding by implying "intelligent design" has scientific credibility, which hardly any reputable scientist will grant (see the Steve project). Nor has any "intelligent design" advocate produced a single piece of original empirical research in support of such a notion that hasn't been immediately, and definitively, refuted in peer review.

"If we don't a priori forclose the possibility of a designer, why can't we employ similar tools to examine the presence of design in natural history?"

Because there is simply no evidence that "intelligent design" exists. No evidence has been found that has survived peer review. It's simply not a scientific theory.

"All we really care about is what you're doing in your bedroom. We're so spiteful and repressed that we want nothing more than to know who you're diddling and then, after taking a quick peek, to make you stop."

I've generally found that sarcasm is often the only time the rightwing tells the truth. But in this case, you're wrong. Religiously correct sexual behavior within marriage is not the only thing these people care about - who are only a small subset of deeply strange extremists, even by right wing causes.

The people funding "intelligent design" don't simply have close ties to Rushdoony's insane racist theocracy. They are on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, which directly advocates Rushdoony's "theology." The "intelligent design" unit within Discovery (which is otherwise a fairly mainstream conservative foundation) was founded with money directly from Ahmanson. But surely, you knew that, as well as you knew that Ahmanson represents the furthest stretches of rightwing crackpots.

Without Ahmanson's funding, there'd be no national movement to establish "intelligent design," which is simply creationism tarted up with a wink-wink nudge-nudge as a pseudo-science.

All of of this has been exhaustively researched time and again. The best single place to start is probably Forrest and Cross's book, "Creationism's Trojan Horse."

"Intelligent design" is not a vast rightwing conspircacy. It's a small rightwing conspiracy that has been advanced due to widespread ignorance of science (and theology) and a relentless campaign of disinformation with unlimited propaganda funds.

And again, despite all the hoopla, there is no science whatsoever in "intelligent design." And it's bad theology.

14

Tristero, Mumom, and Mr. Goggins:

If you're right, then your posts, like yourselves, are just the meaningless outworkings of chemical interactions. The complexity that differentiates you from, say, a field mouse, is no more important than that which differentiates the field mouse from a jellyfish. You are matter, but you don't matter.

But you are not right, and every hint of emotion you put into your posts (like Tristero's "Sigh") only adds to Joe's case while defeating your own.

What is the point in asserting that there is no point? If you're right, then not even a monkey would waste as much time as you do on Joe.

15

1) There is only one thing that might serve us as a source of information about truth - our own thought.

Let's accept this for the sake of argument.

2) If it can be shown that a thing arises entirely from non-rational sources, we can never have reason to accept that thing as a source of information.

Ice cores are intersting, You drill a hole in a glacier and you can see (near the top) different bands that correspond to the snowfalls of different seasons. You can collect information about previous years winter's from the ice core since when the snow fell it never melted...just got compacted by the next years snowfall.

This is a source of information. Did it arise from a rational source or irrational one? If the former then evolution would be equally 'rational' per your definition. If the latter then #2 isn't a true statement and your argument collapses...yet again.

The most common objection to this conclusion is an appeal to the evidence from our own experience. Since we regularly engage in reasoning that produces true beliefs, the materialists' contend, we have reason to trust our noetic equipment. But such a response is pragmatically circular -- it attempts to provide a reason for trusting our noetic equipment that requires that our noetic equipment be trustworthy.

Our experience is that we are able to form true conclusions about our environment. To the degree that the environment is related to the REAL WORLD (here I'll define the real world as that which is ruled by what you term rational) then it is not surprising that evolution would produce a beign capable of rational thought.

If by rational thought you mean abstract thought, formal mathematics and logic...then it should be noted that human minds do not do this 'naturally'. They require training and practice to be able to do this. This training calls upon more fundamental traits that we shouldn't be surprised evolution selects for.

No, that's a pathetic charicature of ID. ID says we can employ the tools of reason to evaluate evidence of design in natural history. We do this in many other branches of the sciences -- archeology for example (is this odd shaped rock a product of human design -- a tool -- or is it just an odd shaped rock?).

Too bad ID doesn't actually do that or even try. Instead they have spent all their energy trying to persue the fallacy of a false choice ("If we can show any problems in evolution, the only alternative is ID").

16

I agree with you here, and I know many other ID proponents do as well. But that's beside the point. ID doesn't depend or derive from a literalist reading of Genesis. It simply asserts this: we use various analytical tools to determine the presence of human design in archeology, forensics, history, and other disciplines. If we don't a priori forclose the possibility of a designer, why can't we employ similar tools to examine the presence of design in natural history?

Push Joe around a bit and he'll post a link to a scientific article on panspermia (the theory that life or at least the major building blocks of life arrived on Earth from somewhere else, Mars, comets, etc.). Among the options considered in that paper is the possibility of either purposeful or accidental 'seeding' of earth by intelligent visitor(s). An 'intelligent designer' was never ruled out 'a priori' from consideration at all from science.

17

Jim Gilbert:

If you're right, then your posts, like yourselves, are just the meaningless outworkings of chemical interactions.

I don't really know how that could be inferred from what I wrote.

One does not need a belief in creationism, or even a deity in which to find meaning in life.

The complexity that differentiates you from, say, a field mouse, is no more important than that which differentiates the field mouse from a jellyfish.

Why do you need to feel more important than a jellyfish? Or, to put it a way more in line with my post, why do you need to feel more important than a dolphin?

But you are not right,...

Why?

What is the point in asserting that there is no point?

I'm not asserting that there's no point. I'm asserting that Joe's argument is incoherent, - it lacks meaning to me, and moreover, it's irrelevant.

18

The complexity that differentiates you from, say, a field mouse, is no more important than that which differentiates the field mouse from a jellyfish. You are matter, but you don't matter

So evolution says I'm different than a field mouse but I'm not more important? Where does evolution say that, exactly? Important has an objective definition? Isn't 'important' related entirely to context? For example, in the context of testing for toxicity the mouse is often nearly as important as the human.

While we are on the subject, what is this 'complexity' you are talking about? The field mouse is 'less complex' than the human and the jelly fish is less complex than the mouse. How is that measured? If I had 50 mice would their total complexity equal one humans? How about all the mice in North America? How about all the jelly fish in the ocean?

19

Joe,

The argument itself could be fine-tuned, more intelligently designed, so to speak. You could, for example rephrase (1) to something like "There is only one way to know truth, and that is through thought". I'm not sure that (2) is necessary at all, since it muddies up the waters a bit by speaking of a "thing", which could include any "thing". Maybe you can replace "thing" with "thought" or "thought process".

Other than that, the argument is interesting, though I'm not sure about the conclusion. It does seem that some of the critiques of your argument, especially the ones that argue that we know by observation that our minds work or that we know 2+2=4, entirely miss the point of your argument, which is sort of a transcendental argument to show how the metaphysical framework of naturalism, which posits that everything that exists is the result of blind natural forces and/or chance, does not permit us to trust our cognitive abilities if it is true.

20

Jim,

What is the point in asserting that there is no point?

Jim, we've gone over this already in the Richard Dawkins comment thread.
I told you in that comment thread that I do believe there is a point to your life and my life.

In comment number 301 of the Dawkins thread (September 22nd, 11:58 am), I said to you:

"The basis of our morality ... is that nature tells us we are on our own, so we need to choose for ourselves. This means we have to be smart, think about it, and choose whatever works best."

"As for what the purpose of life would be ... [my] own view is that the purpose of life is to be grateful we're alive and make the most of it. We're only around a relatively short period of time, so it's good to remember that and make sure our priorities are really what we want our priorities to be. The purpose of my life is to pursue my values and the welfare of my family in a way that is consistent with being supportive and fair towards everyone else in the world."

I think that's a pretty good purpose for my purposes. Perhaps meaning is not so much a teleological kind of thing-y, but more of a process thing-y associated with just going about the business of our lives. I'd be interested to hear your views about it, of course.

I don't think life has no purpose.

I just think my purpose in life is not dictated by the Bible or some church's catechism (along the lines of: God created and loves us, and gives direction and meaning to our lives).

I believe that meaning is something we discover for ourselves in the course of living out our lives and grappling with the issues that confront us.

If you have discovered meaning and purpose in God and Christianity, I salute and respect that. Even though I don't believe that God literally exists, or that Christianity is literally true, I do believe that God is a potent metaphor for love, truth, and all good things.

If you choose to believe in a mythical being, God, that serves as a metaphor for something that really does exist (love, truth, goodness, etc.), then you really are believing in something that is true. Even if God, the supernatural person who allegedly created and controls the cosmos, doesn't really exist.

I respect your belief in God and Christianity, and I don't want to shake you out of that. I just ask you to respect my materialism, and understand that materialists can be just as rational, reasonable, and good as Christians.

As always, I thank you very much for your questions and criticisms. You have a way of cutting to the real heart of these debates. It's too easy for a discussion of competing worldviews to get stuck on philosophical conundrums that are not always very enlightening.

Cheers!

21

Jim Gilbert,

Now we are getting somewhere.

What you are saying is precisely what I, too, have been saying, that the objections to evolution are not scientific, but moral and religious.

However, you seem to believe that the moral/religious implications of evolution are odious - a life without meaning, humans just a bunch of sputtering chemicals, not a glorious life. Therefore, you seek an alternative.

But I say there are NO moral/religious implications to evolution by natural selection that compel agreement if evolution is true. One can infer many different moralities and religious beliefs that are perfectly consistent with Christianity and Darwin's theorizing. Just ask the former Pope or Kenneth Miller, an evolutionary scientist who is also deeply religious.

Nor can support of teaching science in science class (and only science) be construed as invariably a belief in atheism. Most supporters of evolution are not atheists but church/temple-goers. (But even if that were not the case, evolution would still be true and would have to be taught, because it is science.)

Therefore, this is not a battle about the scientific truth of evolution, over which you agree there is no serious dispute (and if you don't agree, go to Pharyngula and convince PZ Meyers, before trying to persuade me). This is an effort to get the government to establish a very particular, and very strange, set of religious and moral beliefs. Beliefs very few people in the US actually agree with or want.

Every hint of emotion, in fact, detracts from Joe's case, as it detracts from Joe's insistence on human beings as the only rational actors. But animals also have emotions, not just human animals. Just as non-human animals are perfectly capable of rational behavior.

As for a sense of specialness, evolution in no way demands the acceptance of equality with other animals. In fact, just the opposite. Sure, humans are far better at performing Bach than my new puppy. But my puppy has a heightened sense of smell and can hear far higher frequencies than I can. Also, he gets free food and board for his entire life for which, unlike his master, he need not do a stitch of work. (This is one very clever animal.)

We evolved to be different from other animals. Some things, many things, we do better than they. And many things we do far worse. I fail to see how such an observation of a plain truth leads to the kind of nihilism you assume must necessarily follow from the reality of natural selection.

David,

Recasting Joe's post as a purely epistemological proposition, that we cannot know what is true if everything that exists is the result of blind natural forces, simply makes his point even more incoherent.

Once again, there is nothing that compels belief in "intelligent design" to absolutely know that 2+2=4 everywhere. Nor is the phrase "blind natural forces" synonymous with the process of speciation by natural selection. Nor is the human brain a completely reliable truth machine.

The world is a far more complicated place than Joe thinks it is. One would think that instead of complaining about some woozy notion of "materialism" -whatever that could be- his religious beliefs would help him feel astonishment at the wonder of it all.

22

Again Joe exhibits his strange obsession with the words 'chance' and 'accidents'. Strange because he shows a complete lack of understanding what these words mean yet seems to ascribe sometype of mystical meaning to them.

In Joe's world, something isn't meaningful if it can be attributed to 'chance' but is if it can be attributable to an intelligent person. If Joe was hit by lightening tomorrow that wouldn't be meaningful because its a 'chance accident' but if Joe retreads the same tired argument 4 posts in a row then its meaningful because it was done with 'intelligence'.

The irony, of course, is that it is only by chance that Joe wasn't hit by lightening a few days ago therefore it is only an accident he is able to say anything meaningful at all here!

23

Boonton,

Exactly. I've been reading Judge Sewall's Apology, a new biography of one of the most interesting judges in the Salem Witch Trials. It is striking how much personal meaning this devout Puritan ascribes to natural phenomena like lightning. Such events are taken as primarily indications of God's will, which need to be understood and reacted to. Lightning strike destroys someone's house? Perhaps God is punishing them for skipping church last week. And so on.

Perhaps that's what Joe believes, a kind of Puritanism of the Cotton Mather variety, where even the smallest events carry cosmic import. And he is entitled to believe that.

What he is not entitled to do is demand the government establish his Puritanism as the state religion. And that is what all this nonsense is about. Because Puritanism is a religion, because creationism is part of a religious system of belief, and an American government cannot establish a religion.

24

Matthew Goggins --
This is almost exactly what I was trying to reconcile in my head the last couple days. Fantastic posts, thank you.

25

Since my formulation of the argument was selected for the discussion (thanks, Joe!) I suppose I must speak. But unfortunately almost all of the above posts suffer from one or both of the following problems:

1. Changing the subject. This was not originally a discussion about evolution or intelligent design. The argument is that if materialism is true, we have no grounds for believing our own thought to be valid. You can believe that and still be an evolutionist and/or a non-theist. So all this rigamarole about evolution and ID is a sideshow. It's also not an argument over whether materialists are good people, or at least it wasn't on the previous thread, although now it appears to have devolved in that direction.

2. Lack of context. A lot of people are demanding more specification for the neat little five-step argument I wrote. But originally this was presented not as an argument in itself, but as a capsule summary of an argument we had been going over at some length on the other thread. Almost all of the demands for more specification would be satisfied, and most of the counter-arguments responded to, if I reproduced here the arguments we posted on the other thread.

Now, this leaves me with a problem. On the one hand, it's probably futile to ask everyone to go read the other thread, where the real argument is presented, because the thread is long. On the other hand, I'm too lazy - er, I mean busy - to repost it all here after having spent so much time posting it yesterday. Since the current thread is now thoroughly cemeted into a spitting match over who's more stupid, adherents of evolutionism or ID, I'm going to give up and opt for laziness.

26

Ed's post is on topic and (unlike, say, Boonton's comments about "chance") makes an argument that wasn't addressed in the previous post. He writes:

"Your inquiry is in vain. If materialism is a possible reality, how does assuming it's not an actual reality make your reasoning faculty any more reliable?"

You're right; it doesn't. But that's not the argument. You've misstated our thesis. Our thesis is that if materialism is true, we have no grounds for accepting any human thought as valid. Your argument here only points out that refuting materialism is not by itself sufficient to establish the validity of human thought. We never said it was. We only said that materialism by itself is sufficient to rule out the validity of human thought.

"Boonton touched on this, but it seems that one must be omniscient in order to be certain of something. Nothing is certain, and I could be wrong about that. The point is that it's well known that human thought at some point reduces to unfounded assumptions. Assuming this is not the case doesn't affect it's reality. If that's cause for you to get a lobotomy or something, then maybe thinking isn't for you anyway."

Leaving the snarky comment aside, this sounds to me like an admission that you do not in fact think we have grounds to accept human thought as valid. If so, you are not refuting our argument at all. In which case it would be more forthright of you to say that you agree with our argument and then proceed to the point on which you disagree with us (which, I take it, is the question of whether it matters if we have grounds for accepting our thought as valid).

"Finally, I'd venture that there weren't a lot of accurate thoughts before the acquisition of language and, later, writing. It has been through informal and, later, formal education—a passing down of ideas that seem to accurately describe reality and produce effects therein—that we have come to be as knowledgeable as we presently believe ourselves to be. In other words, it is culture that over time sifts through accurate and inaccurate ideas and in some cases (we might hope) amasses the accurate ones. (Again, though, nothing is certain and I could be wrong about that. I'd bet anything that that is the only semblance of absolute truth you'll ever come across.) When the acquisition of more than one accurate notion is deemed all the more absurd, culture's function of fashioning over time a body of ideas that probably began as utter nonsense into science is discounted—which isn't fair."

If it were possible for a non-rational universe to produce a single thought for which we would have grounds to accept it as valid, I would agree that this is probably a pretty good history of how it could have developed over time into an ever-greater volume and complexity of valid thoughts. But what is that to the point? The argument is that a non-rational universe could never produce such a thought. Even if, by some wildly implausible series of events, all the right atoms lined up in just the right way to produce a thought that happened by pure coincidence to be valid, we would still not have grounds for accepting it as valid. To put it more colloquially, it might be valid, but we could never *know* whether it was valid.

27

Jeff,

Matthew Goggins --
This is almost exactly what I was trying to reconcile in my head the last couple days. Fantastic posts, thank you.

Thank you, sir.

By acknowledging that I was able to communicate successfully with at least one other person, you have single-handedly redeemed that god-awful half-hour I spent last night trying to reconcile Joe's misleading concession on brain evolution with the rest of his comments. :)

Thank you again, I am grateful for your kind remark.

28

There is something that keeps bothering me about all this discussion... what is meant by "non-rational", in the context of causes and the universe? I apologize is this has been beaten to death in some other thread, I've only half-read a few of the related discussions. I've seen this concept in a number of philosophical/religious discussions, and it really isn't clear to me what is meant by it, and being a key component of Joe's argument, I think I need to understand it clearly.

29

I found two other points (made by Matthew Goggins) that weren't addressed on the other thread (at least, last I looked) that deserve a response here:

He writes: "my materialism is not an a priori belief. It is based on what I observe over and over and over again, day in and day out: no supernatural forces, beings, or events. If in the future I were to observe anything supernatural , I would be forced to revise my belief system and reject materialism."

But if you observed the same facts with a different set of philosophical premises, you *would* observe supernatural phenomena - not directly, but indirectly by the testimony of others. There are innumerable people who claim to have experienced the supernatural. You examine the evidence and decide that all these claims are wrong. I examine the evidence and decide that while most of them are wrong, some are right.

Why do we interpret the evidence differently? Because we have different premises about what makes a claim about the supernatural plausible. And we hold those different premises because we start with different philosophies.

The existence of God is not amenable to forensic examination; it's a philosophical question to be resolved by reason, not by empirical data collection. As I've said elsewhere, if your philosophy doesn't tell you there's a God, no amount of observation will make you believe in one, but if your philosophy tells you there's a God, all your observation will confirm it.

He writes: "How do you justify your belief in the reliability of your brain (your noetic equipment) without assuming the reliability of your brain in the first place?"

I can't speak for Joe, but as for myself, I forthrightly admit that I assume the validity of thought - not of any particular thought, of course, because we can make mistakes, but the validity of thought in principle. Another way of saying this is that I assume the mind is capable of having valid thoughts, even if not all its actual thoughts are valid. I assume this because I see no alternative to assuming it. I can't think that thought is in principle invalid, because that thought contradicts itself.

No one should take this as any kind of concession in the argument we're having. The thesis before the house is this: if materialism is true, we have no grounds for accepeting thought as valid. Discussion of whether thought is or is not in fact valid, and why we should think so, is simply irrelevant to determining the truth or falsehood of the thesis we're supposed to be discussing.

30

Jeff,

Normally I would let Joe speak for himself, but he seems to have gone into hiding for a while. :)

Originally, Joe was characterizing evolution as random, or driven by chance events. This is a controversial position to take, because it's not really obvious that evolution can be fairly characterized as a random, or "pseudo-random", or chance process. (I would personally come down hard on the side that says that evolution is not random.)

I think the big problem with claiming evolution is random, is that the very terms "random" and "chance" are not very well defined, even for mathematicians. So I suggested using Roger's term, "non-rational", in place of the terms "random" and "chance".

The advantage of using the term rational is that it appears to be quite apt. Darwinian evolution is indeed non-rational, in the sense that there is no rational agent directing or guiding the process of natural selection. There is no person or consciousness that is intervening in the Darwinian version of evolution.

And this is in direct contrast to Joe's preferred way of looking at evolution, Intelligent Design. Joe posits that some rational agent, such as God, has intervened in the process of evolution in order to guide it and push it along.

More specifically, Joe believes that God (or at least some intelligent agent) was necessary in order to create any brain that can be considered rational. Without rational intervention, the information that Joe believes is necessary for a rational brain to evolve would be forever missing.

31

Tristero,

You mistakenly assumed from my sarcastic post that I accept the "scientific truth of evolution." To the contrary, I question the throne upon which you have placed science.

What you are saying is precisely what I, too, have been saying, that the objections to evolution are not scientific, but moral and religious.

Yep, but I'm also insisting that "scientific" objections are not inherently superior or more believable than religious ones, i.e., that materialistic reasoning is no more "real" than metaphysical belief.

But I say there are NO moral/religious implications to evolution by natural selection that compel agreement if evolution is true.

And I add that if evolution is true, then what does it matter? Mumon can claim he finds meaning in life without a deity, but if there's no deity then there is no meaning for him to find. His claim is meaningless, just as he, himself, is meaningless, just as my response to him is...blah, blah, meaningless blah.

One can infer many different moralities and religious beliefs that are perfectly consistent with Christianity and Darwin's theorizing.

Now it's your turn for bad theology. There are certainly some moralities and religious beliefs that are somewhat consistent with Christian teachings, but seeing as the legitimacy of Christianity hinges solely upon the veracity of Jesus' resurrection, I cannot call anything else perfectly consistent with it.

Nor can support of teaching science in science class (and only science) be construed as invariably a belief in atheism. Most supporters of evolution are not atheists but church/temple-goers. (But even if that were not the case, evolution would still be true and would have to be taught, because it is science.)

We diverge here. Those church/temple going believers in evolution get stuck in Genesis chapter one: The creation "days" are not in an order that supports evolution, meaning that early life had to be sustained directly by God, rather than naturally. They need to read their Bibles as carefully as they read Darwin. As for your claim that "evolution would still be true," since you were not present to witness it, and can only look at evidence you believe supports it, you are making a statement of faith. Joe is insistent, and I agree with him, that belief in evolution is just that, a belief, a statement of faith in something you did not witness.

As for a sense of specialness, evolution in no way demands the acceptance of equality with other animals. In fact, just the opposite. Sure, humans are far better at performing Bach than my new puppy. But my puppy has a heightened sense of smell and can hear far higher frequencies than I can. Also, he gets free food and board for his entire life for which, unlike his master, he need not do a stitch of work. (This is one very clever animal.)

My friends in Trinidad, where homeless dogs vastly outnumber humans, would laugh you out of the room for that paragraph. "Your" puppy lives well only because of the possessive pronoun in front of the word "puppy."

We evolved to be different from other animals. Some things, many things, we do better than they. And many things we do far worse. I fail to see how such an observation of a plain truth leads to the kind of nihilism you assume must necessarily follow from the reality of natural selection.

Nihilism...ah, there's a cause worth defending! ;-> Your "plain truth" cannot lead anywhere else, but you'll have to ask your puppy to explain why.

32

Mumon,

Why do you need to feel more important than a jellyfish? Or, to put it a way more in line with my post, why do you need to feel more important than a dolphin?

Eeek, eeeeek, eeeeekkkk, eek, eeeeekkkkk!

33

It would seem like rational simply means produced by the mind, thought. But when we say someone is 'irrational' don't we usually mean he is acting like he isn't connected to the real world? That he is acting like his is in a world totally inside his head?

Rational then seems like it is quite intimately connected to the material world while irrational is quite unconnected to the material world. Evolution, being a real world process, should be expected to produce animals capable of making true statements about the real world. What would be unexpected would be for it to produce animals that could make true statements about the nonmaterial world. If materialism means nothing exists outside the material world then there the nonmaterial world is an empty set. If you believe there is a nonmaterial world then something beyond our natural brains is needed to understand it. In Christian theology this is where the need for revelation would be cued.

34

Dopderderk

"The history of science is the story of dominant paradigms being overthrown."

Gawd, what a bunch of self-serving anti-intellectual baloney.

Tell you what, my friend: stop using your brain to think and use it only for praying.

Also, please leave a note for your mom requesting that when she finds you dead of starvation she, she posts a comment here saying "Larry, you were right. The scientific method and reasonable reliance on previous experience and acquired knowledge are useful tools for surviving. I don't know know what my moronic son was thinking. I guess we can look at the bright side and recognize that he was a potential threat to society."

35

Boonton,

So evolution says I'm different than a field mouse but I'm not more important? Where does evolution say that, exactly? Important has an objective definition? Isn't 'important' related entirely to context? For example, in the context of testing for toxicity the mouse is often nearly as important as the human.

Boonton, the point is that evolution does not "say" anything, which is why it renders its proponents unimportant. We're talking defaults here.

While we are on the subject, what is this 'complexity' you are talking about? The field mouse is 'less complex' than the human and the jelly fish is less complex than the mouse. How is that measured? If I had 50 mice would their total complexity equal one humans? How about all the mice in North America? How about all the jelly fish in the ocean?

That's a silly paragraph, written by a man who wanted to interject something but, for the moment, had nothing to add. Yet it still explains the complexity I was talking about, since all the field mice and jelly fish in the world could not have constructed your silly paragraph.

36

Greg,

Two questions:

What is the definition of supernatural?

Why are you allowed to "forthrightly admit that [you, Greg Forster can] assume the validity of thought", whereas I "have no grounds for accepting thought as valid"?

Thanks!

37

Jim

"I'm also insisting that "scientific" objections are not inherently superior or more believable than religious ones, i.e., that materialistic reasoning is no more "real" than metaphysical belief."

Jim says this to us because it makes him feel good about his religous beliefs.

But if we had a camera and we could watch Jim, we'd see that, in fact, he relies on so-called "materialist reasoning" to the same extent that we all rely on it.

Unless Jim is channeling his thoughts to us through "prayer" or some other supernatural means of communication that he as been blessed with by his deity.

But what are the odds of that?

I think the odds of that are zero.

38

Greg

"There are innumerable people who claim to have experienced the supernatural. You examine the evidence and decide that all these claims are wrong. I examine the evidence and decide that while most of them are wrong, some are right."

Uh, how do you decide which are wrong and which are right, Greg? What is the "evidence" you are weighing?

Let me guess: the ones that are consistent with what your preachers tell you is in your holy book are right. The others are wrong.

Am I wrong?

39

That's a silly paragraph, written by a man who wanted to interject something but, for the moment, had nothing to add. Yet it still explains the complexity I was talking about, since all the field mice and jelly fish in the world could not have constructed your silly paragraph.

So complexity is the ability to construct a paragraph? Are illiterate humans then less complex than us advanced writers? What about humans with severe brain damage, unable to speak? How about the fact that we were told mice are 'more complex' than jelly fish? I'm not sure how one can say a mouse is more able to construct a paragraph than a jelly fish?

40

"If you're right, then your posts, like yourselves, are just the meaningless outworkings of chemical interactions. The complexity that differentiates you from, say, a field mouse, is no more important than that which differentiates the field mouse from a jellyfish. You are matter, but you don't matter."

One of the things I find most distasteful about misrepresentations of materialism is the contention that if materialism is correct, people somehow don't matter. I know of no materialist who either believes this or acts in a manner consistent with that belief. Undoubtedly, Joe will agree and cite that as a manifestation of the worldview's "internal inconsistency". I feel it is illustrative of his failure to understand materialism and the implications of subjective morality (which, as Matthew has pointed out with some accuracy has elements of objectivity).

We matter because we matter to us. I don't, however, think we matter to a seemingly indifferent universe, and if your need for objective meaning is that great, perhaps materialism would indeed nihilistic in your case. I would say that that is a pity.

41

Hold the presses!

Rob Ryan has just conceded that morality may in fact have something of an objective nature to it!

What's next, a concession that George W. Bush may have been a fair-to-middling president so far? :)

42

Jeff: By "non-rational" I mean an event that can be fully explained without reference to its truth or falsehood. Say E is the event and C is the set of conditions that cause E to occur. (By "cause" I mean that, given C, E must happen, and if C were different E would be different.) So, for example, if E is my pencil hitting the floor, C would include conditions such as: I opened my hand which was holding the pencil, gravitation pulls heavy objects downward, a meteor didn't fall and destroy the whole building before the pencil hit the floor, etc. The set of conditions C includes only those that cause E; if you could change or remove a given condition without changing E, then that condition is not part of C.

An event E is "non-rational" if C does not include any conditions requiring a proposition to be true or false. Obviously I don't mean that all the conditions stated in C must be true (i.e. it must be true that I opened my hand, that gravitation pulls downward, etc.). That's a given. I mean that none of the conditions in C take the form "P (a proposition) is true" or "P is false."

Now, it seems clear to me that if materialism is true, all events that occur are non-rational in this sense. I am not asserting that if materialism is true, nothing is true or false. (Duh.) I am asserting that if materialism is true, then truth values have nothing to do with what events do or do not actually happen. If I believe that 2+2=4, the set of conditions that cause me to believe that 2+2=4 does not include the truth value of that statement. It would still be the case that 2+2=4 is indeed true, but its truth would have nothing to do with my believing it.

But if all thought is non-rational in this sense, what grounds can we have for believing that any particular thought that occurs to us is in fact true? If a butterfly in Japan had beat its wings slightly differently a thousand years ago, I would have had a different thought. It seems obvious to me that once a thought is fully explained by conditions that do not include its being true, we cannot have grounds for accepting it as true. Perhaps it is true, but we have no reason to think it is. In the last thread we used the example of a stone that was unearthed with writing in ancient Greek describing how Kimon fell in battle. If we think that a human being carved those markings, we might then have a debate about whether we should conclude that there actually was a Kimon. But if we think that the markings are the result of geology and weather, and only by coincidence happened to form marks that are identical to ancient Greek letters, at that point we clearly have no reason to think there actually was a Kimon.

43

Jeff,

I would strongly recommend using my explanation of "non-rational" in preference to Greg's!

44

"[S]ubjective morality" should read "subjective meaning". Sorry! And I left out "be" in front of nihilistic. For some reason, my monkey brain is unreliable today.

45

"Rob Ryan has just conceded that morality may in fact have something of an objective nature to it!"

Hmmph! Look at the context, Laddie; I still view it as subjective. For me, elements of subjectivity trump elements of objectivity with regard to classification.

46

Ah, the joys of a free hour or two...

Rob Ryan,

...One of the things I find most distasteful about misrepresentations of materialism is the contention that if materialism is correct, people somehow don't matter. I know of no materialist who either believes this or acts in a manner consistent with that belief. Undoubtedly, Joe will agree and cite that as a manifestation of the worldview's "internal inconsistency". I feel it is illustrative of his failure to understand materialism and the implications of subjective morality (which, as Matthew has pointed out with some accuracy has elements of objectivity).

Of course it is internal inconsistency. The very phrase "to understand materialism" illustrates it, since by "understand" you mean more than mere mechanical computation. As for "subjective morality," what an oxymoron.

We matter because we matter to us. I don't, however, think we matter to a seemingly indifferent universe, and if your need for objective meaning is that great, perhaps materialism would indeed nihilistic in your case. I would say that that is a pity.

So you distinguish yourself from the "seemingly indifferent universe" which spawned you? How? Why? To what, er, purpose?

Boonton,

Your silly paragraph reply was even sillier, which is irritating since your comment #33 was so lucid. Go ask Tristero's puppy or Mumon's dolphin.

I'm off to the chiropractor, in fact, because you got my neck out of joint. Now if only I could find someone who untwists knickers...

47

Matthew Goggins wrote: "What is the definition of supernatural?"

I understand "nature" to include all conditions and events that are "non-rational" by the definition in my post above. That's why I wrote that if materialism is true, all events are non-rational by that definition.

I am not familiar with any better definition of the difference between nature and supernature. You can't say nature is "the physical world" because "physical" just means "natural". It's circular. You can't say nature is what we percieve with our senses, because we don't perceive our own thoughts with our senses, and everyone agrees that at least some of our thoughts are part of nature.

It seems to me that the distinguishing characteristic of events in nature is that they happen as they do without regard to truth values. Water flows downhill without caring about truth. If all our thoughts are part of nature, then they are like water flowing downhill - they proceed as they do simply because they must, without regard to whether any proposition is true or false.

If you have an alternative definition of the difference between nature and supernature, by all means please suggest it.

He also wrote: "Why are you allowed to 'forthrightly admit that [you, Greg Forster can] assume the validity of thought', whereas I 'have no grounds for accepting thought as valid'?"

Granted, if I assume thought is valid (at least in principle), then I must allow you to do so. And I do! But then we must go on to investigate whether this assumption is consistent with our other beliefs. If you assume that thought is valid while simultaneously holding a philosophy (materialism) that is inconsistent with accepting thought as valid, you are engaged in a contradiction.

48

Actually Greg, I would say some of the resident materialists are "betrothed" to their contradictions.

49

I swear I didn't set up that gag on purpose. :)

50

Jeff: By "non-rational" I mean an event that can be fully explained without reference to its truth or falsehood. Say E is the event and C is the set of conditions that cause E to occur. (By "cause" I mean that, given C, E must happen, and if C were different E would be different.) So, for example, if E is my pencil hitting the floor, C would include conditions such as: I opened my hand which was holding the pencil, gravitation pulls heavy objects downward, a meteor didn't fall and destroy the whole building before the pencil hit the floor, etc. The set of conditions C includes only those that cause E; if you could change or remove a given condition without changing E, then that condition is not part of C.

Excellent, I'm with you so far. Evolution, BTW, would be a totally rational event (or actually series of events) under this definition.

An event E is "non-rational" if C does not include any conditions requiring a proposition to be true or false

Now you're getting strange.

Now, it seems clear to me that if materialism is true, all events that occur are non-rational in this sense...If I believe that 2+2=4, the set of conditions that cause me to believe that 2+2=4 does not include the truth value of that statement. It would still be the case that 2+2=4 is indeed true, but its truth would have nothing to do with my believing it.

What exactly are you talking about here? What causes you to have a particular belief or the truth value of that belief?

Let us say you believe your pencil will not hit the floor when you drop it. You may have this false belief because you've taken some really potent drugs. The cause of this belief then is a true statement (you just took some potent drugs). At the same time it doesn't depend on the truth value of the belief (whether or not the pencil really will resist gravity if you drop it).

But if all thought is non-rational in this sense, what grounds can we have for believing that any particular thought that occurs to us is in fact true? If a butterfly in Japan had beat its wings slightly differently a thousand years ago, I would have had a different thought.

Indeed, perhaps you would have never been born if that butterfly had beat its wings slightly differently. This is why I get so annoyed with Joe's obsession about 'chance' in regards to evolution. Even once you get beyond evolution the fact you're doing what your doing depends on the fact that lots of 'chances' and 'accidents' happened in your favor...as well as against your favor.

In the last thread we used the example of a stone that was unearthed with writing in ancient Greek describing how Kimon fell in battle. If we think that a human being carved those markings, we might then have a debate about whether we should conclude that there actually was a Kimon. But if we think that the markings are the result of geology and weather, and only by coincidence happened to form marks that are identical to ancient Greek letters, at that point we clearly have no reason to think there actually was a Kimon.

True but the fact is the rock was produced either by:

1. Either a real life person recording something about a real Kimon.
2. A real life person recording a lie about Kimon
3. Geology and weather.

Without any additional information we can't really be sure about this, can we? I don't really see the value in this line of analysis. In real life, we can often rule out the weather and geology leaving us with just the first two options to contend with. Sometimes we cannot. The 'Face on Mars' is a good example (if it had turned out to be more real) of something that could have been created by people of a sort or by natural conditions. If Mars had been destroyed after the first photograph of it we would have still be wondering today.

51

Greg

"If a butterfly in Japan had beat its wings slightly differently a thousand years ago, I would have had a different thought."

Dude! Like that Ray Bradbury story and that movie with Ashton Kutcher (he might be married to Demi now -- can you dig it?).

Git the bong out! We're gonnna have a good time now that Greg is tripping with us.

52

Boonton wrote:"Let us say you believe your pencil will not hit the floor when you drop it. You may have this false belief because you've taken some really potent drugs. The cause of this belief then is a true statement (you just took some potent drugs). At the same time it doesn't depend on the truth value of the belief (whether or not the pencil really will resist gravity if you drop it)."

There's a pretty key point in my post that you've missed. It was this: "Obviously I don't mean that all the conditions stated in C must be true (i.e. it must be true that I opened my hand, that gravitation pulls downward, etc.). That's a given. I mean that none of the conditions in C take the form 'P (a proposition) is true' or 'P is false.' "

So, yes, "you just took some potent drugs" is a true proposition. But the causal factor here is not the truth of the proposition stating that fact, but the fact itself. That's the key difference.

Recall that I said any condition not necessary to cause E is not part of C. My taking the drugs is part of C, but "The statement 'you just took some potent drugs' is true" is not part of C.

He wrote: "Indeed, perhaps you would have never been born if that butterfly had beat its wings slightly differently. This is why I get so annoyed with Joe's obsession about 'chance' in regards to evolution. Even once you get beyond evolution the fact you're doing what your doing depends on the fact that lots of 'chances' and 'accidents' happened in your favor...as well as against your favor."

I'll leave aside evolution, which is not what we're arguing about here. It's true that for any thought T, the set of conditions C that cause thought T to occur include things like "the person having the thought was not previously killed by a truck." But that's not the point. The point is whether *any* of the conditions of C involve the truth value of T.

For any thought T whose causes C do not include the truth of T, we have no reason to accept T as true. If this is the case for some thoughts but not for others, we can accept some thoughts as true but not others. However, if it is the case for all thoughts, we can't accept any thoughts as true.

He wrote: "True but the fact is the rock was produced either by:
1. Either a real life person recording something about a real Kimon.
2. A real life person recording a lie about Kimon
3. Geology and weather.
Without any additional information we can't really be sure about this, can we? I don't really see the value in this line of analysis. In real life, we can often rule out the weather and geology leaving us with just the first two options to contend with. Sometimes we cannot."

You're missing the point. You're concerned with the question of whether the marks were caused by #1, #2, or #3. But the point is that *if* we think #3 is the case, it follows that we cannot have any grounds for believing in a real Kimon.

In the metaphor, the marks on the rock are human thought and Kimon is truth. If the marks on the rock arise from non-rational forces, we cannot have grounds for believing in a real Kimon - even if he really did exist, we'd never know it. Similarly, if human thought arises from non-rational forces, we have no grounds to accept it as true.

53

Jim Gilbert,

" 'What you are saying is precisely what I, too, have been saying, that the objections to evolution are not scientific, but moral and religious.'

Yep"

And there you have admitted it. This is not about scientific truth but about moral and religious belief. Your particular moral and religious belief, which you have every right to believe but absolutely no right to demand the US government establish as truth in a public school science class. Now, let's deal with the rest of that sentence:

"but I'm also insisting that "scientific" objections are not inherently superior or more believable than religious ones, i.e., that materialistic reasoning is no more "real" than metaphysical belief."

Well, I certainly hope you are never my pilot, or designed the airplane I'm flying in, or my surgeon, or my anesthesiologist, or anyone else in a position of life and death over me or anyone I know.

Quite frankly, the first half of this frightens me. If you think there isn't an inherent difference between a religious and scientific explanation, I don't know whether to back away slowly and humor you; laugh at the preposterousness of what you're saying because no one really believes that except a few nut cases who won't let a sick kid take medicine; or calmly explain to you that there are millions of cases when scientific explanations are the only salient ones and millions where scientific explanations aren't half as apt as theological ones.

As for the second half, the part that starts with "materialistic thinking," I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. I am concerned only with evolution by natural selection and its relationship to religious belief, not some vague notion of "materialism."

Now later in your post, you claim that evolution is inconsistent with Christianity. But it is only inconsistent if, and only if, you insist on reading the Bible as a science textbook, which it clearly is not, and was never intended to be.

You can choose to so regard the Bible. But you cannot teach your interpretation of the Bible as science in a science class. Why? Because it is your religious belief and not science.

You say that consistency with Christianity depends upon the veracity of Christ's resurrection. The evolution of species by natural selection has nothing to say on that, just as the science of optics has nothing to say on it either. Therefore, evolution in no way serves as a challenge to what you yourself say is the most critical issue. If you wish to remove the term "perfectly" before consistent, go right ahead. It's a quibble, but suit yourself.

You bring up the tired old argument that I wasn't there, so how could I know? I urge you to ask PZ Meyers at Pharyngula.com the very same question. He will simply send you off to numerous websites that will explain in detail the fallacies behind your question. If you don't agree with those explanations, by all means try to convince Dr. Meyers. When you do, and he concedes you are right on the science, I will be happy to listen to your further criticisms of evolution. Until then, let's stick to theology.

To recap, you must agree that since evolution has nothing directly to say about Christ's resurrection, the criterion you chose as crucial, it does not necessasarily challenge the central core beliefs of Christianity.

Again, I remind you, the Bible is not a science text and Genesis - I can't believe I have to write this, in 2005 no less! - was never intended to be a literal description of the origin of species or the universe. Except within your particular interpretation of scripture.

And so I repeat: Believe whatever you want. But you have no right to impose your religious beliefs on others by demanding the government teach them in public school science class.

54

Greg,

Whether or not "materialism" - whatever that is - is true is a question that becomes important only within the context of specific issues, of which evolution is one.

Otherwise, it's... immaterial what anyone about it. That is, the word "materialism" has no specific object.

55

Speaking of apes and man, there is a tremendous new book on the subject now out: Who Was Adam? It details how the latest science finds that we are unrelated to apes.

56

You're missing the point. You're concerned with the question of whether the marks were caused by #1, #2, or #3. But the point is that *if* we think #3 is the case, it follows that we cannot have any grounds for believing in a real Kimon.

In the metaphor, the marks on the rock are human thought and Kimon is truth. If the marks on the rock arise from non-rational forces, we cannot have grounds for believing in a real Kimon - even if he really did exist, we'd never know it. Similarly, if human thought arises from non-rational forces, we have no grounds to accept it as true.

Which dovetails nicely with my statement that we can trust our brains to make true statements about the material world. If you think there is nothing besides the material world then there's no problem. If you think something exists outside the material world then you have a serious problem unless that something somehow reveals its nature to the material world....in other words the doctrine of revelation.

The logic only works if you are talking about the ability of evolution to produce a brain that makes true statements about the non-material (or supernatural if you prefer) world. Joe, in his desperation to find any loophole to use against evolution, is trying to distort that into the material world.

57

But you can be a materialist and not believe in evolution, or be an evolutionist and not believe in mat