The Teleological Argument (p4)

[Archaeopteryx]

No, I have already explained why several times. The scientific community, maybe not every single person, but the scientific community in general, has accepted the fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life.

The following has more quotes about this:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/finetuning

In other words, if any of several constants or initial quantities had been only slightly different, the universe would not be life-permitting. That statement has nothing to do with purpose (which your quotes are focusing on) but is only an observation. Carroll does not disagree with the above statement. It is only regarding the explanation which he disagrees with.

The quotations I am referring to concern fine-tuning for life, not "purpose." As I demonstrated to you, Carroll thinks that "fine-tuning for life is dubious at best," and both Stenger and Krauss think that P1 has it backwards. How you can ignore their own words on the matter to insist that they agree when they do not is beyond my understanding.

 

[Moral Orel]

Again, no serious apologist believes in a god of the gaps. That's just a caricature that atheists throw out. Christians believe, just like the early scientists did, that God works through nature. It's called providence.

No, it isn't just me hearing atheists claim that. It is what I am deriving from your argument. You choose design as the best option because you don't know any better answer. That is god of the gaps. You believe that design is the best option because you think you have ruled out the other options. But the other options are really only ruled out by a lack of evidence (not a complete lack, just not enough for you). There is nothing inherent about a model of design that you can posit to explain why it has to be design. There is no evidence for design being a part of the reasoning other than we don't know much better.

If you really want this argument to not be a god of the gaps argument, explain the evidence for design instead of explaining how other solutions we might have had aren't good enough. You haven't done that. You have stated that evidence that points to the resurrection can be argued (which is another thread entirely) but that would nullify any need for this argument, so that isn't valid here either.

You also haven't addressed any of the evidence put forward for the other possible explanations. For instance the evidence I put up about the multiverse and the fact that universal constants have been known to change and the fact that you can change multiple constants at a time and still have a perfectly coherent universe. These are all things I have put forward to the argument that you have ignored over the past 600 posts. I've been here since page 1 too.

So maybe instead of standing on the idea that necessity and chance can be ruled out because of a lack of evidence, and arguing about your misleading use of the word "for" in P1 and how the scientific community agrees with you, you should start explaining away all the actual evidence to support the other members of your false trichotomy and start putting forth actual evidence for design.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

No, it isn't just me hearing atheists claim that. It is what I am deriving from your argument. You choose design as the best option because you don't know any better answer. That is god of the gaps. You believe that design is the best option because you think you have ruled out the other options. But the other options are really only ruled out by a lack of evidence (not a complete lack, just not enough for you). There is nothing inherent about a model of design that you can posit to explain why it has to be design. There is no evidence for design being a part of the reasoning other than we don't know much better.

If you really want this argument to not be a god of the gaps argument, explain the evidence for design instead of explaining how other solutions we might have had aren't good enough. You haven't done that. You have stated that evidence that points to the resurrection can be argued (which is another thread entirely) but that would nullify any need for this argument, so that isn't valid here either.

You also haven't addressed any of the evidence put forward for the other possible explanations. For instance the evidence I put up about the multiverse and the fact that universal constants have been known to change and the fact that you can change multiple constants at a time and still have a perfectly coherent universe. These are all things I have put forward to the argument that you have ignored over the past 600 posts. I've been here since page 1 too.

So maybe instead of standing on the idea that necessity and chance can be ruled out because of a lack of evidence, and arguing about your misleading use of the word "for" in P1 and how the scientific community agrees with you, you should start explaining away all the actual evidence to support the other members of your false trichotomy and start putting forth actual evidence for design.

This is why I think that, however weak the evidence for physical necessity and chance is, it is still greater than the evidence for design presented thus far. Why? Because no evidence for design has been presented at all. None. An examination of the relative merits of all three options could suggest that design is the weakest explanation of the three, which is something the apologist cannot risk. The scientists studying this very question don't seem to regard design as the most likely candidate. Yet we are led to believe that their disagreement with P3 and the conclusion is not as important as their agreement with P1.

 

[The Cadet]

Well, I applaud you for admitting that atheists sometimes rule out God a priori.

No, science rules out your definition of god as an explanation a priori. Notice how different that is from your statement. And there's a reason for this, too: science rejects supernatural explanations as they are fundamentally unfalsifiable, unexaminable, and indeterminate. There is no mechanism by which we could tell one supernatural explanation from another; there is no way to tell a supernatural explanation from a highly complex natural explanation; and there is no way to ever determine that something is not caused by some supernatural explanation. (Did I walk around the room using my muscles, or did God move my muscles on invisible strings? Did the aspirin work, or was it just a pixie healing my headache, and tomorrow it won't work?)

...Also, can someone ask Joshua260 if he has me on block or something? He seems to have stopped responding to my points.

I believe that with many atheists, it's really not "a lack of belief", but rather a committed belief in atheism. They're committed to the belief that God does not exist and move forward on that basis. So thanks for being honest about that.

Just for reference, here's the post you were quoting. Deka words it poorly, but his slightly "harder" form of atheism is not based on some a priori belief! It's based on consistent, reasonable standards of evidence, and the usefulness of understanding the world.

‘Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

http://creation.com/amazing-admission-lewontin-quote

Lewontin is wrong. Science is not based on a commitment to materialism, naturalism, realism, or anything of the sort. It's based on the demonstrable utility of methodological naturalism. We take the side of science in spite of the absurdity of some of its claims because it works.

He's right about one thing, the "divine foot in the door" thing. As I said before, if we allow for a supernatural explanation, we can throw the entire method out the window, as for every given natural explanation shown, there is an equally compelling, explanatory supernatural explanation (with no falsifiability or predictive power, just like "some outside force designed the universe", but that's never stopped you). In fact, there are an infinite number of equally compelling explanatory supernatural explanations. The entire method becomes corrupt beyond utility. This doesn't mean that there are no things best explained by supernatural explanations, it merely means that we have no way to know if they do.

If you're looking for empirical proof for the existence of God, you should study the evidence surrounding the Resurrection.

How does the resurrection of Jesus demonstrate your God? Why couldn't it be some hypothetical alternative God, who just decided it would be good for a laugh? Or Satan, who wanted to turn us away from the one true God by making us worship the idol of Jesus? What if it was aliens, testing out an advanced machine for reconstructing recently-dead bodies from remnant electrical signals in the brain? There are literally an infinite number of possible explanations for why Jesus would be resurrected if we allow for supernatural explanations, and there's probably quite a few such explanations even without appealing to the supernatural. Assuming it actually happened, it is not proof of your god. It is proof of something we do not yet understand.

Of course, your "reasonable faith" citation asserts the bible as a historical document and is very light on other independent citations. Personally, I don't know about you, but if you want to claim something happened which by our current understanding is downright impossible, you're going to have to do a little better than that! Your second link does a little bit better - it cites the bible, but it also cites evidence by which we can reasonably assert that the people behind the Heaven's Gate cult were right.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Lewontin is wrong. Science is not based on a commitment to materialism, naturalism, realism, or anything of the sort. It's based on the demonstrable utility of methodological naturalism. We take the side of science in spite of the absurdity of some of its claims because it works.

He's right about one thing, the "divine foot in the door" thing. As I said before, if we allow for a supernatural explanation, we can throw the entire method out the window, as for every given natural explanation shown, there is an equally compelling, explanatory supernatural explanation (with no falsifiability or predictive power, just like "some outside force designed the universe", but that's never stopped you). In fact, there are an infinite number of equally compelling explanatory supernatural explanations. The entire method becomes corrupt beyond utility. This doesn't mean that there are no things best explained by supernatural explanations, it merely means that we have no way to know if they do.

Were it not for the influence of a pre-existing theology, I wonder how many people would independently conclude that the best explanation is that some immaterial, unembodied person magically conjured things into being through incantation.

 

[James Is Back]

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